Phantom Thief
by Kaen Okami
Summary: Professional thief Jadeite Sustrai dreams of only one thing: a happy family. So he sets out from home to seek his fortune, certain that soon he will be able to bring his wife and little daughter into a life of wealth. Unfortunately, his plan is nowhere near as clever as he thinks. And before long, young Emerald's life takes a nosedive straight into hell, and never comes back up.
1. Chapter 1

" _You don't understand. You don't know what it's like to have nothing, to stare up at the palace and_ know _you deserve more, to be called 'street rat.'"_

\- Cassim, _Aladdin and the King of Thieves_

~0~

Truthfully, he wonders what took him this long in the first place.

It's still dark outside as Jadeite Sustrai gets himself dressed and ready, the first weak rays of dawn barely able to push past the smoky gray clouds and the bulky, ugly buildings of Mitsubachi City. The only benefit of having nothing, he thinks as he ties his low ponytail up in a scrap of brown leather, is that it will be very easy for him to travel light. On his body, a dark shirt and boots, frayed cargo pants, and his torn and worn green jacket. In the bag slung over his shoulder, his only other change of clothes, a bottle of water, a list of potential hot spots and contacts he'd jotted down, and the old copy of _Fantômas_ he'd swiped from a bookshop years ago.

It's hardly anything. But it feels good enough.

His stomach growls, and in spite of himself, he glances over at what passes for a kitchen in their dirty basement apartment, and then turns his attention right back to tightening the strap holding his rusting scimitar to his back. He mentally slaps himself for even considering the idea. There's food in the cupboards - it's crap and it's meager but it's there - and there's Lien, stashed in the dusty space behind the broken fridge where Beryl stores her stock. But he is _not_ going to take any of it. He'll leave his girls behind, sure, but he won't leave them with any less than they already have.

His girls...

Despite the knot in his stomach that tells him not to, Jadeite looks back over his shoulder at the blanket-covered pair curled up in the corner. Even asleep, there's a ghost of a scowl on Beryl's face, and she's coiled into herself like a steel spring, ready to jump up and run at the slightest sign of a threat; his wife never can let go of that constant tension in her body. The stress lines in her face grow more pronounced every day, her hair, once thick and far darker green than his own, grows thinner and loses its luster, and it's been years since he's seen a smile on her face that wasn't tight and spiteful.

Still, he'll take such smiles gladly; they're what he gets a lot of the time, when he returns home with his many pockets full. On the days when he doesn't, though...He tenses his body to hold back a reflexive wince. Even now he can feel the sharp sting of a palm striking his cheek, the burn of long nails digging into his skin deep enough to draw blood.

 _How long am I going to have to deal with this, Jade?!_ Sometimes it's the sharpened edge of one of the Lien cards that _she's_ earned that day, sliced across his cheek. But not often; she cuts her supply of angel dust with a few different things, but his blood's not one of them. _How long are you going to keep letting us down?_

He swallows hard. It isn't as if he doesn't care for her anymore, he knows he does. And she has her moments of affection, as well, doused in bitterness as they are. But it's been a very, very long time since he could look at her and feel the once-familiar spark of love in his chest. Or feel anything, for that matter, except for the faint, longing ache for what they once enjoyed.

Count that, he decides, on the list of things he will surely take back once he completes this little mission of his.

Yes...Yes, that's right. Even after everything, there's still something he values enough to stay here far longer than he should have. Tucked loosely under Beryl's arm is Emerald, clinging tightly to her mother in her sleep. While not quite happy (maybe, on some level, realizing that he is missing from his usual place on her other side), she still looks far more content than either of her parents. Jadeite doesn't want to think about what that face will look like when she realizes that her father is gone, and won't be coming back anytime soon. Doesn't want to see her tears, hear her begging to know where he is, why he left her...

Jadeite bites his lip, and pulls his eyes away from the sleeping pair. Any more of this emotional bullshit, he thinks with a shake of his head, and it might just convince him to stay.

But no. That's no longer an option; if he turns spineless now, then nothing will ever change. He takes the last soft steps to the door, grabs hold of the knob, turns it and pulls it forward as slowly and quietly as he can, so it won't let out its usual earsplitting creaks...

"Daddy?"

 _Fuck._ Perhaps he hadn't been quite as quiet as he thought.

For a second, he's frozen, standing ramrod straight. He takes a short, deep breath; if there was ever a time when he needed to stay perfectly calm despite all his internal screaming, this would definitely be it. So he plasters on his best everything's-perfectly-okay-don't-ask-me- _shit_ smile, and turns around to face his daughter.

"Hey, princess," he says softly, watching Emerald slip out from under her mother's arm and walk up to him. "You want to be a little more quiet? We've got to let Mama sleep."

"Okay." The little girl's stage-whisper isn't quite what he had in mind, but Beryl sleeps like the dead, anyway. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to work." Technically, it isn't a lie. He'll be working harder than ever from here on out. "And _you_ can go back to sleep."

"I don't want to. Can I come with you?"

"N-No, baby, you can't."

She looks confused. "Why not? I always come with you."

All right, he doesn't _technically_ turn every theft of his into Take Your Daughter To Work Day. But it's often enough that Beryl and his partner, Akashi, are constantly sniping at him about it, and Emerald has been left with the impression that she is part of the team. He doesn't regret it; while the world of crime is no place for kids, he needs to make sure his daughter knows some way to survive. And he'd rather she live on her own terms, like him, and not get caught up in the drug trade like her mother.

Even so, he _has_ set some limits, and right now he's thankful he did.

"No, this is one of the big ones. _Really_ big. Remember the rule? If you might get hurt, you're not coming. You know that."

"But I want to help. Can't I help?"

Gods fuck him, this is going to get harder and harder the longer she keeps him here, keeps looking at him with that sweet, innocent, unsuspecting face. He swallows hard, because if he doesn't, everything he's really feeling is going to spill out: _I don't want to leave you, I don't want to miss a single second of your life, I want to hold you and teach you and protect you forever, I..._

"I know you want to. But the best thing you can do to help is to just stay here and wait until I get back, all right? Then we'll have a lot of fun, just the three of us."

Any other time, that would have been enough to elicit a reasonably happy "Okay, Daddy!" and send the girl back to Beryl's side with a smile. But _this_ time Emerald gives him a supremely skeptical look just like her mother's, as if she's on to him, because why the hell should anything in his life go easy?

"Do you _promise?"_ she wants to know.

Well, at least the question isn't hard.

"Yeah. Yeah, I promise. I left Mama a note on the counter saying where I'm going, you can show her when she wakes up. But I should be back before _too_ too long." Gods willing, he'll get lucky, and come back with a way out of this city that won't immediately fall apart in his hands before the year is out. He doesn't like to think about how the wait will hurt them both, if he doesn't work fast. And here in the meantime...

"Oh." He doesn't know why it didn't occur to him before...Well, yeah, he does. Despite his years of training with his Aura and Semblance, he's never tried this particular trick on anyone before. But he knows the instructions on what to do, so to speak. He's sure it can't be _that_ hard. "But listen, before I go, here's what we'll do. Daddy's gonna do a magic spell, that will protect you while I'm gone, okay?"

Emerald's face lights up, in the way only a thrilled child who doesn't know any better can. "You can do magic?! How?!"

"Shhh, sh, sh, quiet for your mama," he quickly shushes her, tapping her lips with one finger, though he has to hold back good-natured laughter himself. "Remember, a magician never reveals his secrets. All I need to do, is just reach into your heart, and..."

Jadeite bends down to press his hand to his daughter's chest, willing it not to shake and praying he doesn't fuck this up. He can feel her heartbeat under his fingertips, small but strong. It takes a second for it to come to him, but once it kicks in, it's a simple thing for him to send his own Aura into her, the key that unlocks her soul's true potential. She fidgets a little bit, feeling the shift of her soul inside her, but doesn't whimper or squirm away, just looks at his hand with a puzzled expression.

Up north, they have a whole ritual surrounding Aura activation, with proverbs and life lessons and everything. He doesn't remember much of all that - his focus had always been on honing his own Aura - but he does recall their usual closing line.

 _I release your soul, and by my shoulder protect thee._

"Oh, oh!" Emerald yelps, eyes going huge at the glowing golden-white energy heating her father's palm and brightening around her own skin. Jadeite narrows his eyes in concentration. His vision briefly blurs, with the strain of focusing his soul, but it passes quickly; apparently it doesn't take much effort to free all the aura in such a small body.

"Okay, then," he murmurs. "All done."

Emerald looks puzzled, patting experimentally at her chest and then studying her hand, brow furrowing when she doesn't see the glow anymore. "It's gone."

"No, it's not. It's still right there in your heart, remember? Daddy will be there to protect you even when I'm not actually there, you got it?"

"Don't got it," she insists. "You have to be here for it. That's how it works."

 _Well,_ then. He'd love to have the time to argue the logistics of Aura usage with a five-year-old, as much as he'd love to do anything else, but unfortunately, his time here has run out.

"We'll see about that when I get back, all...all right?" Jadeite says softly, praying she doesn't notice him choking up.

Despite how many times he told himself he wouldn't, he leans quickly forward and wraps his arms around Emerald, gathering her in and holding her to his chest. To his surprise, instead of his will being broken, it's resolved tenfold.

Here in his arms is every reason he has to stay, and every reason he has to leave. He can feel how painfully small she is, thinner and weaker than a child her age should ever be.

It's always been that way. Always. He remembers, and the memories _burn -_

Watching his girl's soft little hands close around her mother's handgun, far too big for her, and her face scrunch up in concentration as she tries to aim for the cigarette cartons set up at the end of the alley. Her mother locks a cold, hawkish stare onto her, ready to snap at her when she fails.

Coming home with nowhere near enough in his pockets, feeling his toddler's burning forehead and sweat-soaked hair. As she struggles with a raging fever, her eyes are shut tight and she can't speak, but he can tell what she's thinking anyway: _Daddy, please, make it stop._

Cradling his months-old baby close as she wails and cries, not normal infant fussing but real screams of pain from the hunger gnawing at her stomach, and he hushes and rocks her knowing that it's all he can do, with no damn food in the place for her. Sometimes he can get his hands on it, oftentimes he can't. His Semblance gives him an edge over other thieves but it will only take him so far.

Eventually Beryl, walking into the room on leaden legs; when she looks at them there is flat nothing in her eyes, not even the desperation in his own, anymore. She takes their baby into her arms, to her breast, without feeling her or looking at her. Her malnourished mother's milk is no longer enough, has never really been enough, but what can either of her exhausted parents do, when they're both starving as well?

It's been this way for his daughter since the day she was born, and if he doesn't do something, that's the way it will be for the rest of her life. Just like it's always been for him and for Beryl, and for their parents before them...Jadeite has had enough. After a life of skating by on the bare minimum, dreaming high but never committing, he _will_ do his duty as father and husband. And he won't come back to this shit city until he has something to show for it, and his duty is complete.

"Ugh...Daddy, too tight!"

Emerald is not inclined to share her father's sentimentality, squirming and batting at his shoulders with her tiny arms. Another time, he could respond with a squeeze and a laugh, _Aww, don't you want just one hug before Daddy has to go, princess?_ Now, he can't so much as smile.

"I love you, so much," he murmurs, trying to memorize exactly how it feels to hold her in his arms. Even now, he can feel every single one of her ribs, and it's downright nauseating. "I'll be back soon. You two make sure to sit tight and wait here until then, okay? And you make sure your mama reads the note on the counter so she's not wondering where I went."

She's looking up at him with the beginnings of confusion. He doesn't know if his casual tone is still holding and quite frankly he doesn't care anymore. His stomach churns and his head pounds at the thought of breaking her gaze but he has no choice.

He has to force himself to speak his last words above a strangled whisper. He won't say goodbye. He can't.

"See you soon."

He swears on every god, he feels something _rip_ inside his chest when he turns on his heel and tears himself away from her. He grabs the door, yanks it open, and practically throws himself out of it and onto the short flight of stairs that leads to the street. Emerald's startled cry of "Daddy!" comes just a split second before the door shuts behind him much louder than he intended - _sorry, Beryl_ \- but it's enough time for one last needle of pain and guilt to pierce his heart.

He activates his Semblance, Aura rippling over him like a sheet of cool water, and disappears from sight as he starts to trot up the stairs. Even invisible, he tries to stand tall and keep his chin up - as he is constantly telling his always-slouching wife and partner, posture has a proven effect on how you feel about yourself - but what he hears from back inside the apartment as he goes makes that...difficult.

"What the - _Emerald,_ what the hell's wrong with you?! Get away from the door!"

"Mama, I'm sorry! It wasn't me, Daddy just left!"

Jadeite bites his lip. It had probably been a good call after all to include that in his note, one more reminder of what he's constantly telling her: _Please, be gentle with her, Berry. Emerald loves you. I know you love her. And she needs you more than ever now._

"Ugh, that man...Where's he going? He told me he could stay home to watch you!"

Crap. He did say that, before he'd gotten wind of these new plans, he remembers. His head drops in shame...Well. No turning back now. And it's not like she can chase him, when he goes invisible to get away from the apartment; she's tried and failed enough for them both to know that.

"He said there's a note on the counter."

"Well, go get it for me..."

He _knows_ she can't catch him. But when he hears the faint shuffle of footsteps and then the shrill " _What the fuck?!"_ as his message sinks in with his wife, he's bolting down the street before he can hear the door open again, as fast and frantic as if he's running from the cops.

 _Sorry, Berry,_ he thinks, not for the first time but for what he hopes will be the last. _Don't think too badly of me, I'll make it up to you both. And I'll apologize properly for everything, when I come back._

~0~

Jadeite has managed to develop quite a lot of stamina over the years, so it's blocks and blocks before he finally has to stop running and duck into an alley so he can drop his invisibility and walk the rest of the way. He'd jog - he knows he's late and it's still quite the distance - but in a city that's half riddled with crime and half drugged into lethargy, there's no quicker way to look suspicious than to be in a hurry somewhere. Fortunately, he knows far better than most people how to appear as pleasant and unassuming as a man can be.

 _We thieves are a unique and interesting breed,_ he remembers explaining brightly to Emerald, holding the little girl in his arms as they head up the busy street. _Not like those guys who hold a knife to you and force you to give you their stuff. People don't even know what we did until we're long gone, if we do our job right. So we need to make them_ happy _to see us, you see? So we don't spoil the trick._

She's still too young to really understand what a heap of shit their home city is, so she still manages to find a hundred different exciting things to point out to Daddy and Uncle Akashi when they go out, which the two of them usually try their best to turn into teachable moments.

("Trademark," Akashi adds flatly when Jadeite mentions those two words, which for whatever reason makes Emerald burst into giggles every time.)

That was one of the earliest lessons; the two of them have been using Emerald as a prop in their thefts since she was two months old, but it's only in the past year or so that they've trusted her to be an active part of them. 'Accidentally' bumping into people in the street to ask, "Excuse me, I lost my daddy, can you help me find him?", so Jadeite can pop up from behind the person and loudly exclaim his relief at 'finding' her again, so that they don't notice his hand slipping their wallet or Scroll from their pocket and slipping it into one of his own numerous pockets, is a favorite trick. They've taught her a handful more, but all of a sudden it doesn't feel like anywhere near enough, and Jadeite forces himself to swallow the sudden bitter taste on his tongue. No matter. No regrets. He'll more than make it up to her soon enough.

As for now, the old tricks will work just as well.

It's not like the first time he'd met Akashi Meitan, when one second he'd been alone and the next he'd been flat on the ground with a tail stuck in his mouth and a curious Faunus sitting on his chest, inquiring casually as to whether he really had seen him appear and disappear at will. He senses someone behind him, a split second before Akashi's rough hand drops lightly on his shoulder.

"You're late."

When he turns to see the warm dark eyes meeting his own bright red ones, for the first time that day a little bit of the tightness starts to unwind from his chest. At least he'll have at least one familiar person by his side for all this; Emerald will have her mother, and he'll have his blood brother.

"Not like you had anywhere else to be. Hear anything good?"

"What do you think about that uptown market?" Akashi says as they continue up the street, as casually as two good friends ought to be. "More of a police presence than I would like, but we haven't been there before. Farther out of our neighborhood than normal."

"Well, that'll just be today's theme, won't it? Come on..."

The more upscale stores, when they take the risk of robbing them, are generally enjoyable marks. For all their security, they do really think they're untouchable up there, from their utter shock and outrage every single time their precious goods get swiped right out from under their noses. But whatever: it's their own fault for paying attention to the wrong things, after all.

The blocks-long outdoor market that they make their way into is a different ball game altogether: quite the crowd for this time of morning, no security cameras (Akashi is good at spotting those, in any shape and size), and open booths lining the wide, blocked-off street. Jadeite glances around, hoping for some jewelry to snatch, but no. Forty percent artists, sellers of various knickknacks, and tourist trap stands, though gods only know why anyone would want to visit a place like this; sixty percent food stalls, some fresh fruit, some festival food. Perfectly workable.

"Hmm..." Akashi pulls a pair of sunglasses out from his shirt collar, both of them as deep black as his eyes and crimson-streaked hair, and puts them on. He surveys the area along with Jadeite. "How about three?"

A fine choice from their well-practiced list of duo maneuvers, for sure, Jadeite thinks with the air of a connoisseur. But for today?

"Nah. Two."

"Anyone likely?"

"The fellow with the peaches and apples in front of him. If I'm not mistaken, I saw him giving one nasty glare to that nice young lady with the fuzzy ears."

Akashi snorts, decidedly unimpressed. But he nods, and disappears into the crowd. In a more mundane way than Jadeite can, but he isn't one to brag. Besides, Akashi has his own spell to cast, when the time comes for it. Jadeite strolls up to the chosen stall, and gives the vendor...Not one of his winning smiles, he decides, too showy. Just a small, friendly one, like a belly turned over to show vulnerability. It's returned double by the vendor, a man who looks for all the world like a circus ringmaster, carries a powerful scent of sweat, and grins back with every tooth in his ruddy head. He now pays the younger man no mind as he pretends to inspect the selection of fruit, and if he takes a little longer than a legitimate customer, then, well, that won't be paid much attention either.

He had a few years ago asked Akashi, Mitsubachi's reigning king of the resting bitch face, why he didn't smile more often. _You'd set people at ease much more quickly if you did,_ he'd said. _Marks, particularly._

Akashi had _almost_ laughed. He'd made a sound more like his usual sighs, actually, as he looked down at the long waving tail that his baby niece was happily trying to grab. _Jadeite,_ he'd begun to explain, _it isn't a matter of looking kind or not, for me. It's not my_ face _they're paying attention to._

It's less than a minute before his partner shuffles up to the opposite end of the stand, hands in his pants pockets, not making eye contact with either him or the vendor. His tail, normally wound tight around his waist and hidden under the hem of his untucked shirt, is out and proud, deliberately held up for all to see.

Jadeite acts as if he doesn't notice a thing. But the vendor freezes, going even redder in the face, right down to the roots of his greasy hair. Those bared teeth aren't half so friendly, when Akashi gingerly picks up a peach and checks it for bruising.

"Need something, monkey?"

"No, sir. Just looking."

"Well, don't be looking long." He glances at the spot where Jadeite is, and sees nothing. A muscle in his face twitches, and he crosses his arms: they're not strong-looking by any means, but they've got gold watches wound around both wrists and thick rings on every finger. Jadeite finds himself just aching to slide them off, but he certainly wouldn't want to get punched by them for trying and failing. "And don't scare off any more of my customers!"

"No, sir..."

Akashi takes that as his cue: he grabs as much fruit as he can in both his arms, uncaring of the few knocked from the pile onto the ground, and then spins around and charges through the crowd. He even snatches a stray papaya in the coil of his tail. Everyone is too startled to do a thing as he shoulders past the people in his way...Well, almost everyone.

The vendor turns bright, infuriated red from chin to hairline, and his fists clench into tight, hairy-knuckled balls. " _You filthy Faunus!"_

He doesn't leave the stand to chase Akashi, but he gesticulates like a wild man at the three police officers who were already pushing their way across the street, each from a different direction, to do so. Two of them already are going for the guns at their hips, and a few other humans, grinning like mad, are running with them as they follow Akashi down a side street. Somehow, Jadeite doesn't get the impression that they're any kind of legal authority.

But even so, he isn't afraid for Akashi, not completely. His partner knows what he's doing, and if those bastards touch him, they won't know what hit them. _He_ , on the other hand, is relishing in the feeling of Lien under his hands as he grabs all the contents of the man's cash drawer and shoves it all into the inside pockets of his jacket. An actual store might have had more money, he briefly reflects, but the tradeoff here is that he doesn't have to deal with those pesky registers and security systems.

Amid the chaos, he snatches the angry vendor's wallet, and manages to slip into the neighboring stand to grab what he can from the purses of the frantic pair of women running it, who have out of what he can only assume is a panic reflex dove to make sure their own cash jars and goods are safe from any more brazen Faunus. Everything he takes turns invisible, too, right as he touches it, and nobody is any the wiser as it all disappears from sight.

 _Sorry, ladies: should have looked more carefully, huh?_

As usual, Jadeite slips away unnoticed. He had worried at the start of his career that his Semblance might give him away, in crowds, but it was there that he had learned the old principle of Occam's Razor: if some part of him were to accidentally touch another person, that person was far more likely to think that they had been jostled by somebody else, or even that they had imagined it, than to jump to the truth that there was an invisible thief passing them by. His Semblance doesn't hide him from any other sense, but even if he'd been born with a different gift, he would have learned to walk silently anywhere and in anything, as he does now in going to rendezvous with his partner.

They don't usually have a set meeting place; Akashi's role is to run with no goal in mind, and if possible to leave a misleading trail for their pursuers, but Jadeite knows that he generally doesn't exceed a radius of five miles. And in any case, they always manage to find each other, even in a city of hundreds of thousands of people.

Though...Akashi helpfully leaving a different trail of cross-eyed police and wannabe vigilantes stumbling around in the streets, as if their brains have been abruptly sent to a different dimension and left the bodies to wander, certainly helps him out in that quite a lot.

He finally spots the Faunus sitting cross-legged in the shade of a tree, in one of the city's tiny, half-dead corner parks. His sunglasses have been replaced by a baseball cap, likely whipped off some unsuspecting fellow's head, and his tail is safely tucked back under his clothes. His hip pack has suspicious lumps straining the plastic, and he eats his purloined peach in tiny, polite bites.

He looks around to check for bystanders about - only a handful and they're all minding their own damn business, just like he likes people - and then struts up to the tree. Akashi goes still when he hears the sparse grass crunch softly under his partner's feet. He doesn't react when the half-eaten peach is plucked out of his hand, or when Jadeite reappears at his side and takes a hearty bite out of it.

"Thanks! So how'd you do?" Jadeite asks, as if fleeing from potential lynch mobs is a normal thing for a person to have to do.

Akashi sighs. "You know, I resent being called filthy by a man who clearly has never heard of the concept of bathing."

"I know, Akashi."

"...Really. I shampoo my tail."

"You've told me, Akashi."

"When I can, at least." Akashi glances up at him from under the brim of his hat. "I saw that gold on his hands. What excuse does he have?"

"Buck up, brother. Remember, we got away with it. You won and he lost."

"Ah. Fantastic. Finally the long struggle for equality is over. Someone, please, inform the White Fang."

Jadeite laughs, and starts to walk out of the grassy square towards the street. Akashi follows at his right hand, taking what's left of the peach back so he can finish it.

They're not far from the city limits; the uptown train station is only a few blocks from here. He doesn't have a set time for them to depart from the city of Mistral, but he wants to buy their tickets as soon as possible, before the owners of the two or three debit cards in his pocket realize the theft and freeze the things. Inconvenient, really, how fast they rush to do it sometimes! Well, no matter; once they're in the shadowed heart of Mistral's underbelly they'll be safely out of danger. And it's not like he intends to let them be tracked out of this city anyway.

"So, remind me again what your connection in Mistral is?" Akashi asks, as they stop into a card store with a working ATM and no security camera, so Jadeite can withdraw as much cash as he can from them. (By a stroke of blind luck, one of them kept a note of passwords in her wallet.)

At the question, Jadeite's eyes widen in excitement, thin brows shooting up into his hairline, and he almost drops the Lien. They head back out of the store and down the sidewalk again. Jadeite starts gesturing animatedly as he explains, and Akashi has to lean out of the way to avoid having his breakfast knocked from his hand again.

"Okay, so! There's this guy I met in the pawn shop, who knows this guy in the south district of lower Mistral, who's currently recruiting for a big job in the mid-city! So I take him up on it, he gives me all the information, and now we're both expected this weekend. If all goes well, this could be our biggest payout yet! And we'll be in the perfect place to build up more from there."

"And you're so certain that it _will_ go well."

"Of course!" Jadeite blinks over at him, puzzled. "We have a chance to make things better. We can't waste time, before things get any worse."

Beryl calls him deluded, for believing in a better future for their family. But he is under no delusions about the fact that it can very easily get even worse. And he knows that he needs to act, before he sees that happen.

Akashi sighs, much less hopeful. "Well, at least it sounds...vaguely reasonable. I was afraid you were going to drag me treasure hunting."

"A- _kaaa-_ shi! Give me more credit than that!" Jadeite laughs, as they walk up to the ticket kiosk.

He makes a show of taking cash out of his pocket and sliding it through the slot, just to ward off the poisonous glares at anyone who suspects them of just being vagrants hanging around the station. According to the overhead schedule, the next train is due to come in just about five minutes. So he flops down on one of the benches between the tracks and the station proper, kicks one leg up to rest over his knee, and crosses his arms behind his head. Akashi, their tickets and receipts in hand, comes over and leans his elbows on the top of the bench next to him.

"So what does Beryl think about this plan?"

Jadeite's smile freezes, twitching slightly. "W-Well...She..."

Akashi's eyes narrow. "You did _tell_ her about this, didn't you?"

"Well, if I told her _before_ I left, she'd try to stop me! She hates the way things are, she's at the end of her rope, but she wouldn't let me go try to fix things!"

"Calm _down."_ Akashi sighs again. "You realize that that was probably a poor way of handling things."

"I left her a note, like I always do. And when I come back it'll make everything right. She'll forgive me, once she sees I've finally started keeping my promises. I'll give Berry and Emerald everything they've ever wanted and more."

"Ah. And I suppose my niece will understand too?"

"...She's barely five. If we work fast, she won't even remember me being gone. She won't remember suffering here."

Jadeite looks up at the sky: even here, pressing into the part of the city that tries its best to glitter and glow, it's still looming over him as grey and unpromising as it does every day in the slums.

"They can't stay here forever. It'll kill them if they do. Berry's been stuck here too long, it's ground down everything inside her and now she's...Well, you know."

"Cruel."

" _Stressed,"_ Jadeite growls, glaring up at his partner. His heart starts to pound uncomfortably fast. "You don't know her like me, that's not what she's—"

"Okay, _fine._ I guess you have your chance to prove it to me now."

"Me being such a screwup isn't helping, either," Jadeite sighs. "She aims too small but so have I until now. Our daughter can't be stuck with just us, as we are now, as examples to go on...or she'll grow up just as hopeless as everyone else."

They hear a grinding of rails a near distance away, and look up to see the nose of the train rounding a curve and closing in on the station. Jadeite is surprised to feel his heart skip a beat; the point of no return is arriving.

"I have to step up. You don't disagree with me."

Akashi stares at the train. "I will admit...Starving, sedentary, and spat on is not the way I want to live the rest of my life, either."

Jadeite pulls a smile onto his face. "A- _kaaa-_ shi, I love it when you teach me new words."

The train's exterior is gleaming silvery-white, and when they step inside, the strong scent of fake leather hits his nose. Jadeite slides into a window seat, Akashi sits in the middle seat next to him and immediately leans back and closes his eyes. Okay, so they won't be speaking for this trip, that's fine. He'll nudge Akashi awake if there's anything he desperately needs to know about, and meanwhile, he'll just sit here and see what there is to see as they go.

He can't ignore the clench deep in his gut that he feels when the train lurches once and then speeds away, and now there's no going back. But the further away they're taken from Mitsubachi, the easier he seems to be able to breathe.

He watches the city disappear behind them in a blur, and the trees and distant mountains the most vibrant green that has ever hit his eyes. When they finally break out of the cover of the trees, the sight of the brightest blue sky he has ever seen, unbarred by smog or endless tenement housing...Well, it sends a shot of _something_ nice straight to the middle of his brain.

A sudden image of his wife and daughter shoots in along with it. Beryl is smiling, relaxed, not a worry in her head. Emerald is safe in his arms again, laughing carelessly, with no memory of empty stomachs or desperate sickness or her mother's hands turning rough on her—

He gives his head a shake. No, it's not like that anymore, he told her not to. It'll be over soon. They'll be okay.

 _Once I have a safe place to call your home...Don't worry. I'll bring you into the sun with me._


	2. Chapter 2

" _Dear mother, dear father, you clipped my wings before I learned to fly_

 _Unspoiled, unspoken, I've outgrown that fucking lullaby_

 _Same thing I've always heard from you; do as I say, not as I do_

 _Innocence torn from me without your shelter, barred reality, I'm living blindly."_

 _\- Dyers' Eve,_ Metallica

~0~

Days like this are the worst.

The rain pours down so hard and fast that Emerald can't see anything outside the wide front window of the bakery. Though the place is small and warmed by the heat of the ovens, she still shivers to look and be reminded that she'll soon have to run back out into that.

Of course, it's out of nervousness as much as chill. This is a first-time mark for her, and nothing about it puts her at ease. It's late afternoon, near closing time, so there's only two or three other people inside, but that just gives her less to blend in with. And the man behind the back counter - who looks as if he should be breaking bones in the prizefighting ring instead of here baking pastries - had snorted derisively when she'd hurried through the door, and in the few minutes since, had barely taken his eyes off her, contempt and judgment clear in them.

She knows how she looks; a stick-thin preteen in a filthy, overlarge shirt and tattered shorts, soaked to the skin and looking over his precious loaves of bread with broken, dirty fingernails is not something any shopkeeper who gives a shit wants to see on his property. She guesses that the only reason he hasn't chased her out yet is because of her new trick: reach into her empty pocket and ruffle around in it, while slipping the sound of clicking plastic and glimpses of Lien cards into the man's mind, making him think that she is a paying customer, if a distasteful one.

Emerald swallows, trying very, very hard not to look at him, only at the paper-wrapped bread arranged on the table before her as if hung up about which one to buy. She doesn't want to be here. She'd have a much easier time with the convenience stores further downtown, where the tall shelves hid her better, the workers usually didn't give her a second glance, and she could grab bottles of water and one of those huge boxes of crackers that would keep much longer than bread. But lately there were more and more obstacles popping up between her and a bite to eat there: her Semblance didn't work on security cameras, her face was becoming too familiar, as someone who came in often but never could seem to buy a thing, and eventually even the laziest, most apathetic workers are bound to notice something at some point.

So here she is, so scared her stomach is doing backflips and struggling not to give herself away by trembling too much. But if she can pull this off right, she's only seconds away from her first meal in days. Taking a deep, steadying, hopefully inconspicuous breath, and picks up the biggest loaf of bread within her reach. She pretends she didn't just feel the shopkeeper's glare intensify like a hot dagger to her neck, pretends to simply be examining her choice, while in reality she's trying to concentrate. It's more difficult than she'd thought; she hadn't expected her head to start hurting so bad so _fast._ Even without the voice in the back of her mind -

 _("You won't_ ever _do that to me again!")_

 _Don't think about it! Don't look...Don't look...just focus, right over there, behind him, picture it..._

Damn it, this is so hard, too hard, she should have practiced more but it hurt too much, she can't use her Semblance on someone she can't see, she should just forget it and go but the bread is fresh and warm in her hands and it's so big and she's so _hungry -_

 _Now!_

"Wha - ?!" the shopkeeper squawks. He spins around, eyes bulging, to the nonexistent crash of metal behind him. The other two customers look up, startled at the random outburst. And Emerald is off like a shot, tucking the bread under her arm and bursting out the door, cringing at the chirpy ring of the mounted bell announcing her flight. The torrential rain is coming down even harder than before, like a thousand sharp, freezing needles assailing her. Its rushing, splattering sounds are loud in her ears, playing counterpoint to her pounding pulse, but not so loud that she can't hear the shopkeeper's wordless roar of rage behind her. She turns her head, chances a look through the front window, and her heart leaps into her throat.

 _Did he just vault over the counter?! Seriously?!_

The man - the absolutely _gigantic_ man - throws open the front door and starts barreling down the street after her, fists clenched and eyes wide and bloodshot, and a strangled gasp escapes her. She sprints even faster, shoving and elbowing past the staring passers-by flooding the narrow sidewalk (all of a sudden there's too many of them, a wall of flesh moving to trap her), as she hears the all-too-familiar hunting cry booming behind her.

"Thief! _Thief!_ Stop her!"

Desperate to escape, she wheels around and bolts down the closest alleyway. There's no way she can fight this guy off, she thinks frantically, but even up here, Mitsubachi's backstreets have a way of becoming downright labyrinthine to those who don't know them, so she might be able to lose him. If there's one thing she's gotten very, very good at, it's running. She can hear thundering footsteps splashing through the puddles behind her, but she knows that big, heavy opponents can run hard, but not fast. And certainly not for too long, either; when they chase her like this they lose steam within a minute, before they can get near her -

"I'm going to catch you, brat!"

Emerald startles and very nearly slips on the wet stone. _Shit! That's too close!_

She had thought that she was running as fast as she could, but sheer terror spurs her on even faster. Everything starts to pass her in a dark grey and black blur, and she moves by reflex alone, the instincts of a rat fleeing a wild dog. Walls fly by, rain blurs her vision and rushes in her ears, she turns one corner, then turns another, runs down an empty street, turns, turns, runs straight, turns, glances back, runs straight -

" _Ow!"_

\- into something hard and splintery. Dazed, rubbing her scraped forehead, Emerald looks up, and her heart drops when she sees the wooden fence set up before her, right in the middle of the narrow alleyway: a few wide, thick boards looming above her head, with towering apartment buildings on either side of her. Surprise only holds her still for a second, before panic sets her off again. Clutching the bread tighter under her arm, she jumps up and grabs the pointed top of a board, hooking her other arm over it.

The wood is wet and rotten, and she can only hope it won't break under her weight, slight as she is. It shouldn't be that hard, she reassures herself, she's hopped plenty of damn fences. The rain beats down on her upturned face, and the worn, tractionless soles of her shoes scrabble against the slick surface. The wood makes an ominous creaking sound as she pulls herself up, and she can hear her pursuer still close by, but she can't look back, she's almost home free!

But just as she's about to throw herself over the fence, those footsteps reel around the corner into the alley, and a wide, meaty hand grabs the back of her shirt and flings her out into the building by their side. She cries out in pain as her thin body slams against the concrete wall, and the loaf of bread flies from her hand and drops to the filthy wet cement along with her. Unthinking - the only thing in her head is a desperate siren of terror - she makes to grab for it, but is kicked back against the wall the instant she tries.

Before she can do anything - beg, flee, bargain - the man is bearing down on her, fists bigger than her head pummeling every inch of her he can reach. She screams, cries like a beaten dog, and tries to scramble away, but he won't let her under the storm of blows. Her ears ring and her vision flashes red with every hit, her nose is crushed with a sickening crack, and she can feel skin and bone bruising fiercely. And in between it all is what little she can understand of the man's bellowing and cursing her:

" _...teach you to - fucking little - should have just - piece of shit thief!"_

She only barely hears it, she doesn't care. All she can think to do is try weakly to shield herself, curl up like a ball like an insect, with her knees tucked up into her chest, arms crossed in front of her face, and eyes shut tight.

 _Stop it, please stop, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please, please, please just stop!_

It might have been seconds, it might have been a few more agonizing minutes, but eventually it does stop. She doesn't relax, doesn't even dare to breathe, but the fists stop coming and she hears the man straighten up, huffing with exhaustion. The next noise he makes sounds more like a bear's growl than human speech, to her ears.

"You..." The slam of a boot on the ground; she flinches as foul-smelling water is splashed into her face. "That better have taught you a lesson, you little rat. You're lucky I don't drag you to the cops right now."

 _Don't move, don't look, don't move, don't look, oh, gods, please, don't..._

There's no more. Another moment of tense silence, and then the sound of the man's footsteps retreating, growing fainter and farther away until she can't hear them any more. Even then, it takes a few minutes before she can relax the painful tension of her muscles and uncurl herself again. In that time, no one comes, not to help and not to hurt. She supposes that that, if nothing else, is fortunate.

Her head is spinning, and she's going to have so many bruises later. But it doesn't feel like she's got a concussion, or like anything's broken, or permanently damaged. Still, it's slow going, pulling herself back up to her feet. As if her legs are made of rubber, she wobbles, staggers, braces one hand against the wet brick wall before she's able to stand without nearly keeling over. Her legs still shake, but she tries to walk anyway.

 _Come on. Keep walking. Walk. One step at a time. No sense in lying here all day. Walk. It's going to be okay._

Emerald makes it up to a relatively steady standing position. Her ribs are already aching with every breath, even before she tries to move. She takes one small step, that sends pain shooting up her legs. Then another, then...Half of another. She nearly trips on that third step, and by chance her eyes land on the loaf of bread on the ground, that she'd almost forgotten.

It's barely recognizable as the same thing she'd laid her hands on not five minutes ago. The bread had flown out of the paper wrapping, and been quickly reduced to mush by the rain relentlessly pounding on top of it and the muddy water puddling below. It hardly even looks like _food_ anymore. But...It's still there.

Hot tightness grips her throat, and she immediately swallows hard and digs her nails into her palms to stave off the tears before they can come. _Don't be such a baby,_ Emerald scolds herself, and stumbles toward it.

She bends down and scoops the soggy mess into her hands, trying her best to hold it together. The one blessing she has ever been given in this life, she thinks as she shoves the first bite in her mouth, is that she was born without a gag reflex.

It's a long way through the backstreets, and the pain in her legs and ribs only gets worse with every step. She manages to eat the ruined bread at a steady pace, and she makes it near the end of the last alley. There's a dumpster there, and the back doors she'd passed had been for food places, she thinks, maybe it's worth a try...Barely anyone's passing by, no one should see if she just waits a second...

Against her better judgment, she shifts her grip on the bread so she can stealthily push the dumpster's lid up so she can at least peek in. It clunks faintly, but doesn't budge one bit. Locked. Of course. Hardly any of them are open these days. And if they are, all the food's covered in fucking bleach or something. Just to spit in her face. She can't even get the satisfaction of slamming the stupid thing shut before she stumbles the last few feet to the end of the alley.

Fuck it. Her lungs are killing her and her head is still floaty and spinning...She has to stop. _Drop_ , more like: her knees give out and she winces as her backside hits the rough concrete harder than she'd meant to. Well...At least she hadn't landed in another puddle, she tries to reassure herself.

That does not, however, make her any less cold or less wet. She sits on the edge of the alley and the sidewalk, at the side of the dumpster, and forces the next bites into her mouth. There's a shop on her other side, but the awning over its front is too short by far to provide her with any protection from the rain. She looks around for a stray sheet of cardboard, or something else that she could maybe prop up over herself, but no good. She'd managed to get her hands on a coat a few weeks ago, and a nice big one too (winter is coming on fast and pneumonia with it, as always, and even if she wasn't going to be sick northern Mistrali cold is torture enough), but it had been stolen off her while she slept just the other day.

Emerald shivers, and not entirely from the cold. She's lucky that's all that had happened, before she had woken up and run away. Thank gods her Semblance is perfect camouflage.

Mechanically, she keeps biting at the bread, hoping it didn't pick up anything on the ground that will make her sick later. She can't afford to throw this up...She should be figuring out what to do next, but she's tired and she hurts and she's cold and wet and — !

 _Calm_ down _. Just...Just_ try _and take a second to rest?_

Gingerly, she leans back against the brick wall, looking at the street beside her. There's no cars on the street, but plenty of pedestrians walking up and down the sidewalk on both sides. Scanning her surroundings, she can spot a few people like her around, too. One boy about her age, hurrying by with a downturned face and shoes held together by duct tape, with a tarp held over his head to protect him from the rain. A woman with long, matted hair, sitting on the stoop of an apartment building down the street, hunched over under multiple mismatched layers of clothes, a piece of cardboard with a black marker message on it propped against her knees. An old man sitting on the corner across the street, twitching, wild-eyed and wild-haired, with a single Lien card dropped into the overturned hat in front of him. None of them make eye contact with her, and she doesn't mind that.

She doesn't need anybody, she tells herself. It doesn't matter that she's overlooked, when she's not causing trouble. Nobody else cares, why should she?

She's lost count of how many times she's tried to remind herself of things like this. And yet, it's never cooled the hot needle of shame and anger that stabs at her heart, when they look at her like _that._ The people who pass right by her with nice warm clothes and wide umbrellas to protect them from the sleet, who have money and homes and families and lives to go back to, who glance down at her for a split second and then hurriedly look away again, the way you look and not-look at a particularly disgusting piece of roadkill splattered across the street. Again and again and again, every single one of them.

Emerald's body is still frozen to the bones but her belly turns hot with anger. She knows what they're thinking: they wish she didn't exist, they wish they didn't have to see or think about her, they wish she would disappear, or at least go away. But where do they think she's going to go?! Not _home,_ certainly. They'd be happy if she just laid down and died, she thinks, gritting her teeth around another mouthful of bread mush. But not here, oh _no._ Somewhere away from decent people, where nobody has to see something like her.

She huffs, and bites her lip to try to cut off that train of thought. Going off on a mental tangent makes her feel righteously furious, but it won't fill her belly any. And it won't distract her from the other, even worse part of it all that just won't get out of her head, no matter how long it's been or how hard she tries to put it behind her.

 _Home._

Even after five years of roaming around Mitsubachi on her own, Emerald still knows exactly how far she is from that basement apartment at the east end of the city. She still hasn't gotten up the guts to go anywhere near back there, either, even if she isn't sure Mom even lives there anymore. She knows also that she's not a little kid anymore, and what's Mom going to do to her, anyway, if she does run into her again? She could use her Semblance to get out if -

 _("GET OUT!")_

She gives her head a small shake; it's still ringing in her skull. And those hard green eyes and sharp nails...She feels more nauseous than before. Yeah, no. Best to keep her distance. The panicked, childish whine of _I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home_ had taken a long time to stop. But eventually it had, and she's glad of it now.

Mom doesn't want her. Fine. Emerald doesn't need her, not one bit. She doesn't need her and she doesn't need a —

"Nice family!" Her eyes flick to the old man across the street, who has half risen from his corner with arms flung wide, at a middle-aged couple and their sons, not too much younger than Emerald. He isn't going to hurt them, even she can see that; she isn't sure he's able to move his legs, from what she can see of how he moves. "Excuse me! You're such a nice family - Please, could you just give me a little - ?"

The boys stare determinedly up and ahead, as if nothing is happening. The man wrinkles his nose and walks faster, while the woman looks distressed, surreptitiously taking her Scroll out, dialing three numbers, and putting it to her ear.

All right then, time to go, Emerald decides, scarfing down the last of the bread and swallowing hard. She's been tased and smashed with nightsticks before, and she has absolutely zero desire to repeat the experience. The hooded lady and her sign have already made themselves scarce, she sees as she gets up and walks as fast as she can down the street.

Against her better judgment, she turns to take one last look at the scene behind her. The father is glaring back over his shoulder as the mother talks rapidly into her Scroll, no doubt trying to sound as frightened and appalled as she can. The old man looks confused at them more than anything.

Emerald grimaces before turning back and quickening her pace, just a little. She hopes the cops won't hurt him too badly. Like the rest of them, he doesn't have anyone around to protect him. Sturns her eyes forward again, determined to pay the idea no more mind. She's seen such things before and she won't stop seeing them anytime soon, so she might as well just stop letting it all get to her. And just as well...

There's people walking in front of her, at varying distances. She inspects each one of them, gauging the risk versus reward of picking any of them as potential marks. She hadn't been careful enough, before, she should have practiced more. It's no excuse that every time she uses her Semblance -

 _("You little freak, stay out of my head!")_

Emerald bites her lip. It's _not_ wrong to have it, she tells herself for the millionth time, it's _not._ It's her _Semblance,_ there can't be anything wrong or bad or disgusting about it. Her mom is the one that's wrong, and yet...She still feels the ache in her gut and sharp sting on her scalp whenever she musters up the nerve to use it. It's what landed her out here on the gods-damned street, after all.

 _Whining's not going to put food in your mouth,_ she chides herself. _Just suck it up. Stupid brat._

Okay...There's a small hole-in-the-wall cafe on the corner of the street. Outdoor seating. No fence or railing to block off the round picnic tables with umbrellas over them. A girl in a bright green raincoat, only a few years older than her underneath the big hood, is the only one still there and her eyes are glued to her Scroll. Her pocketbook, more of a backpack looking thing, is hanging on the back of her chair, by only one strap. Where in the hell does she think she lives, Emerald wonders, that she can be so careless?

Everyone else is either looking determinedly ahead on their courses or down at the sidewalk, as it and the street are both still running with water. No security or cops or unfairly beefy shop owners around to stop her. She can do it. She can do it. She just has to be brave. Reach for her Aura...

 _("You stay away from me!")_

She has to fight not to let her face contort in rage. Why won't Mom just go _away?_ Not like that's an abnormal thing for a parent to do, anyways...

 _Focus, you dumbass._

It's a simple enough thing. Even if she were just a dime-a-dozen purse snatcher, it would be simple. But she is a cut above other thieves by her inborn ability alone...even if her lack of experience shoves her roughly back down to their level again. As she approaches the girl, she works up her nerve and concentrates on her visible temple. For an instant, the girl sees a mysterious flash of bright red in the cafe window in front of her, and her head jerks up in shock. And while she squints at the window trying to figure out what in the hell she just saw, Emerald takes the strap of the pocketbook in her hand without looking or breaking stride, slipping it onto her own shoulder as if it belonged to her all along.

She doesn't remember where she learned it, but she was taught that if you run when there's no one chasing you, you only make yourself look more suspicious. And _she_ has no intention of being the one to trigger another chase. She turns the corner, out of sight, and heads back towards her usual haunts back downtown. Head up, eyes alert, and if anyone gives her a second glance, she changes the bag on her shoulder into a dripping-wet black garbage bag. She isn't sure that it's a very convincing illusion - she's not good with details yet - but she only has to do it a few times and it seems to work.

It's almost an hour's walk before Emerald finally makes it to somewhere that's usually safe. She'd been sleeping in an underpass for the past few weeks, but too many people complained about the increasing amount of sheet tents and mattresses on the side of their road, and she'd had to bolt from a police raid in the middle of the night. Parking lots and garages are tempting to sneak into to sleep, but she always ends up chased out within hours by security. When she was younger, she'd slept on benches and outside closed stores, but now it seems like every place she looks, there's stainless steel dividers in the benches and black iron spikes in the sidewalk, that tell her very clearly where they'd all like her to go instead. She's heard that there's a burgeoning tent city of some sort a distance outside the city proper, in the forest, but...It's not like she's ever actually _seen_ a Grimm before, but she knows she'd never like to risk meeting one. It's safer to stay here.

So, for the past couple days, Emerald been hiding out in a few different places far, far downtown, where there's not quite as much police presence. There's a school that was shut down a few months back and still not turned into anyplace else; the blacktop is partially out of sight, and so far, she hasn't seen anything in the way of cops or security guards. It's getting dark now, and the pawn shop will be closed by now. So she'll hang onto the bag for the night, and stop in first thing in the morning.

When she walks onto it, she finds that she's not quite alone. In the opposite corner of the chain link fence and dark brick, there's a much different kind of family than before: a man trying to keep two toddlers and a girl too small and thin for Emerald to reasonably determine her age in his arms, as they keep trying to run away to play in the rain and puddles. They look at her like a pack of raccoons in the dark, eyes dark and glinting in the streetlights, the kids curiously and the father glaring as if preparing to have to claw her away. She glares back, hand moving to her hip; with a flash of her Semblance, the man sees the glint of a knife under her shirt. There's a sliver of dry-ish space from the slant of the roof on each side, and she lays herself down on it. Satisfied that she won't be bothered so long as she doesn't move from here, she turns on her side to hide the pocketbook from sight and starts to paw through it.

Tissues, perfume, mints, eyeglasses case, pen, a...roll of duck-patterned duct tape for some reason? Those were all right, she guesses, but nearer to the bottom, and in the side pockets...Some green Lien cards and a layer of change, sanitary pads, full water bottle and bag of fruit snacks, a wallet with more cash and change, ID, and — !

Emerald's brows furrow as she digs out a small fabric-lined box at the very bottom of the bag. It has an easily opened clasp, and she keeps it well inside the bag as she snaps it open. And when she does, she has to fight to keep the shock from showing on her face at the sight of a thin, gleaming chain, with a big jewel cut in a heart and set in silver in the center. The gemstone is beautiful, glittering green. Especially after a day like today, she can hardly believe her luck: all she has to do is keep it safe for the night and soon she'll get...

Well, she has no actual idea of its value, she's not smart like that, but she can still take it to the pawn shop first thing in the morning. Grisa will know what it's worth, or if she doesn't, one of her rotating employees/grandchildren will. It's tempting to think about all the things she could buy, but it's bad luck to get her hopes up before the new item is actually in her hands. And even then it could just as easily be snatched away from her.

 _Don't you ever take anything for granted, baby doll,_ comes that soft, sinuous voice again at the back of her mind. The voice that comes within a hairsbreadth of _caring_ about her. She can practically feel the sharp thumbnail running over her lip. _Don't you ever think that anything is yours to keep forever._

Emerald grits her teeth. Mom had absolutely lost her shit about Emerald's newfound ability to get in her head, and now _she_ won't get out of Emerald's head. It might be funny if it weren't so annoying. And it wouldn't be so annoying if Mom weren't actually right about so many things. She replaces the necklace and slips the box into her pants pocket, hoping the outline doesn't show too obviously.

She rolls over again, closing the pocketbook and clutching it to her chest with both arms like a teddy bear. She would use it as a pillow - it'd be better than the thick black asphalt - but this is safer. She's not going to lose this like she lost her coat. The man across the blacktop is gathering the children to him the same way, eyes still alternating between glaring warningly at her and making sure that they are all accounted for. His age is uncertain, from the dinginess of his wrinkled skin and shaggy state of his hair and beard, as is what his relationship to the children might be. Might be a grandpa, or an older uncle of some kind. Might not be any blood of theirs at all.

But Emerald's instincts say _dad._ And it's another thought that makes her grind her teeth so hard she's probably going to hurt herself one day.

She doesn't know why she sometimes tries so hard to remember her father. Maybe it's the idea, that Mom so spitefully hammered into her head, that she looks just like Dad and if she looks into her reflection, she'll be looking at his face too. But even that doesn't jog her memory. To her, after so long, Jade Sustrai is two blurry flashes of memory.

One, a retreating back that she had looked up at, as it passed through a pale-lit doorway, and then the slam of the door in her face. Had she watched obliviously, happily awaiting his return? Fearfully, begging him not to go? She doesn't remember that part. She'll never know.

Two, the sharp _clap_ of his hand flashing out to grab Mom's wrist, before her open palm slammed into his face. It was dark, but she thinks she remembers the angry curl of lips, a hiss of restrained fury - from which one? Had it worked, or had it only made Mom angrier, hurt him worse? Had that hand ever moved to protect her, like that? She wonders...But she doubts it.

It had taken a longer time for her to accept her Semblance, freakish anomaly that it was, than it had taken her to accept the hot, nauseating weight in the pit of her stomach: the realization that her father had walked out of her life, right before her eyes, with barely a goodbye. For a dumb little kid like she had been, the concept of permanence was...not yet a permanent thing. It had taken an embarrassingly long time to get it through her head that Dad was gone for good.

 _(Her and Mama sitting on the stairs in front of the apartment, in the cold morning air._

 _She squirms; the stone is hard and steep. "Is Daddy coming back soon?"_

 _Mama snorts, pulling a cigarette out of the carton lying against her leg. She doesn't smoke very much, only when she's angrier than usual. "He's not coming back, Emerald. How many times have I told you?"_

 _Plenty, but the repetition doesn't make it make sense. Daddy just went to work, like he does every day. He always comes back. "His note said he would be back soon. That we just had to wait for him."_

 _Mama isn't looking at her. The green plastic lighter in her other hand snaps twice and then flickers to life. "Don't make me regret teaching you to read," she says, too flatly for Emerald to tell whether she's joking or not._

 _She doesn't understand what Mama is so upset about. Maybe she forgot how it works. "It's okay, Mama. Daddy leaves for a long time, sometimes. But he always comes back, and he brings stuff a lot of the time."_

 _She considers telling Mama about the magic trick Daddy did before he left, that made her heart glow. But Mama hates it when he does his disappearing trick, and when Uncle Akashi makes people dizzy with his hands. So maybe best to keep that a secret._

 _The ember at the end of the lit cigarette glows bright, an orange pinprick in her mother's dark eyes. She takes a long drag and lifts her head up to breathe out a cloud of smoke, before she talks again. "Not this time, baby doll. It's been two weeks and not a trace of either Jade or Akashi. No explanation except that stupid note. I can tell what happened. We're on our own now."_

 _Emerald resists the urge to pout. That's_ not _true. "Daddy said he was coming back."_

 _Mama looks her in the eyes. The corner of her mouth tugs up into a smirk, but Emerald doesn't see what's funny._

" _Emerald, if you go through your life just believing everything that everyone tells you, you're going to have a bad time. I should never have trusted that rat bastard, let alone_ married _him, but...Well." She gestures with the cigarette at Emerald, who still isn't quite sure what she means at times like this. "You'd better learn from this, baby girl. Don't you ever trust anyone who can get inside your head that easily. Who can fuck with your head and your heart, and you can't do anything about it."_

 _Something weird twists in her belly, and she doesn't like it at all. It's hard to look at Mama's eyes, would be even through the smoke. "But he_ said. _He_ promised."

 _Mama sighs heavily, her smirk dropping. She doesn't look mean anymore, she just looks...blank. Emerald still isn't sure which expression she's more afraid of. Her mother takes another long drag off the cigarette and blows upward again. "Your daddy said a lot of things he didn't really mean."_

 _All of a sudden, her throat feels tight and it's hard to talk. Her voice comes out in a tiny squeak instead. "Daddy said he loves us."_

 _Mama doesn't answer at first. She looks at Emerald, not blinking, with a strange look on her face. Not loving, but not glaring either. Something softens the slightest bit in the lines of that face, and she reaches out towards her daughter with her free hand._

" _Oh, baby doll," she whispers, in that voice that's almost gentle. Almost sad. She runs her fingertip lightly down Emerald's cheeks and under her chin, back and forth; her one and only fully affectionate gesture. "What's going to happen to you?"_

 _Emerald is never sure whether she's really looking for an answer, when she asks that question, but she figures she should give one anyway. "I don't know, Mama."_

 _Mama makes a huffy kind of noise, that might be the beginning of a laugh. "Well. Maybe I'll be around to find out, maybe I won't." She pauses, tilts her head. "You know, you've got Jade's eyes exactly...With any luck, I won't notice anything else of him in you."_

 _Emerald doesn't know what's lucky about that. "He's coming back soon," she tries again._

 _The fingers on her chin pause, too, grip a little tighter. Not enough to hurt, though. Mama sighs again, and there's still a trace of sadness in her eyes. "I almost wish he had died instead. That would have been easier to get through your head, wouldn't it? Might hurt less, too. At least he wouldn't have_ wanted _to leave."_

 _She still doesn't understand: why would Daddy want to leave? Where would he go? Why wouldn't he let her come along?_

 _Mama is taking her hand off her, leaning back again. She's checking her messages on her Scroll's cracked screen, and taking one last long drag on her cigarette before putting it out on the sidewalk next to her._

" _Come on, now. I've got customers coming," she says as she stands up, wiping her hand on her tattered jeans and reaching up to tighten her thick ponytail. "Looks like you'll be coming to work with me for a while."_

 _Emerald crosses her arms and scoots back on the step. She doesn't like going to work with Mama instead of Daddy; she never gets to do anything to help and some of her customers act all_ weird. _She's even seen Mama have to pull that gun she keeps under her shirt on them a couple times, so they'll stay away from her when they're like that. She still gives them the stuff in her bag, anyway, so long as they're able to give her the Lien in return._

 _But Mama is tugging her up by the arm, zipping up the thin jacket she's wearing over her dress. "I said come on, Emerald. You can't stay here. You want someone to break in and snatch you up, so you'll never see me again?"_

 _Emerald's breath catches, and she grabs her mother's leg with both arms. "No!"_

" _Yeah, that's what I thought." Mama, not roughly, pulls her leg from Emerald's grip. She hitches up the straps of her backpack and starts down the street. Emerald hastily trots after her, and Mama reaches down for her. "Hold my hand, now. I don't want you running off on me too."_

 _Emerald doesn't like not being able to run around, but she does like the feeling of her mother's hand clasped around hers. Mama holds her more tightly, when she cares to, but Daddy holds her soft and warm, enveloping her whole body in his arms. She hasn't thought before about which embrace she likes better, but she knows she misses Daddy's._

 _Mama is wrong, Emerald thinks, though she probably shouldn't tell her so again. Daddy will come back. He promised her he would, and her daddy would never lie. All she needs to do is wait, and she'll see him again soon. She knows it.)_

She should have known better.

A wave of deep shame and embarrassment hits her when she feels that same tightness in her throat and stinging in her eyes. Five years since she'd last seen Mom, eight since she'd seen Dad, and _still_ there are times when she can't stop herself from bawling like a baby about it. She's still so stupid, she still...

She can't look at the father and his kids across the blacktop again. She can't handle the longing, that grips her weak heart and squeezes tight, for the arms around her that she can barely remember. Even relative safety is a distant memory for her, now. She'd thought that unlocking her Semblance was a good thing; even at eight years old, she had known that being able to make someone see anything she wanted was a powerful thing. A useful thing. Cool, at least, as far as her young mind could see. She had thought her mom would be happy, if she were to show it to her...

 _Gods, I was just trying to make her happy...!_

Mom throwing her out...She doesn't want to remember it, how terrified she'd been, how _furious_ Mom had been. She's done her best to block it out, even if it does still stubbornly bleed through.

 _("I don't care where you go, just get away from me!"_

 _She's never seen Mama so scared, so_ angry, _in her life. As for her, she's frozen, tears slipping down her face, and all of a sudden she can't speak._

" _M-Mama...? I-I'm sorry...I, I was just — "_

" _I said I don't_ care! _I'm not letting something like you in my head! You really are just like your fucking father!"_

" _Mama!"_

" _Shut up! GET OUT!")_

Her mother's hatred and resentment, mixed with her own until she can't tell the two apart, still burns in her blood. She'd been right, that one time: grieving somebody who was lost but not dead was a far more complicated pain. But even so, she thinks she could have handled it, if she hadn't been all alone...If she was like those little girls, piled up together in their dad's embrace, it wouldn't matter if her mom didn't want her, if she didn't have anywhere to live. She would have had a home.

But the father _she_ had didn't seem to think she deserved that. _She_ wasn't worth sticking around to protect. And she still has no idea what she had done wrong.

Emerald curls up tighter around the pocketbook, the rough and cracked asphalt digging into her soaked skin, and shuts her eyes tight against the hot tears. They're slipping out again, mingling with the cold rainwater still running down her cheeks. She hates herself for crying again, over two people who couldn't care less about her. Fuck him. Fuck her. Fuck them both for leaving her alone like this!

 _It hurts...!_

 _Stop it. Shut up. Stupid brat. No one cares!_

Forget about Mom and Dad. She has to keep herself under control, now. Every part of her hurts, she needs to sleep; no time to stay awake just to whine to herself all night.

 _Calm down...Calm down...Go to sleep, just go to sleep. Shh. Shhh..._

Every muscle is tensed to run at a moment's notice, should someone give her another rude awakening, and her eyes are shut painfully tight. The rain is still pelting her and pooling under her, and she feels like a drowned rat. Or a trod-upon one, soaked and sore to the bones.

It doesn't matter. She's fallen asleep feeling worse. All she has left to do is pray that no one will touch her tonight, and that her sleep will be dreamless.

~0~

Emerald wakes up in the morning getting the sense that only one of those prayers came true, but it doesn't matter; whatever awful thing she'd dreamed that had woken her up still in tears, it fades from her head within a few minutes. Her body doesn't seem to have been moved or touched, and everything is the same as it was yesterday in the pocketbook. Blinking the sleep out of her eyes, she slings it over her shoulder and walks as fast as she can the next ten blocks down to the pawn shop, scarfing down the bag of fruit snacks on the way there.

"Mm...Hmm." Grisa holds the heart necklace up in front of her face and squints at it through her cataracts, then takes the jeweler's telescope out of the little drawer by the register and squints through that too. "I'll spare you the boring details: it's pretty, but cheap. I can give you seventy Lien for them."

"What?!" Emerald's hand twitches with the urge to slam it against the counter in frustration. "No way it's worth that little!"

Sarale, eldest of Grisa's many grandchildren, sitting on the side stairs leading up to her apartment, pauses in cleaning her handgun to glance up at her through long golden bangs. She doesn't move, though; she's seen Emerald here enough to know that she isn't one of the violent customers, and Emerald has seen enough of the older girl to know that starting a commotion in her family's pawn shop would be a decidedly bad idea.

"You're still not great at haggling, are you, Em?" she says mildly instead, and Grisa chortles.

Emerald looks down at the floor, all the fight quite suddenly blown out of her, and feels her face getting hot. "I..."

"No need to be sorry, dear," Grisa assures her, setting the necklace down on the counter. "You've had a bit of a rough day, haven't you?"

Emerald tries not to fidget, very conscious of the bruises on her arm, poking out from the sleeve of her shirt. They've darkened into obvious bluish-purple by now, and she dreads having to eventually look at the way the rest of them are mottling the skin of her torso.

"I'm fine. It wasn't that bad," she says, trying to sound sure about it. "Are...It's a real gemstone, right? Not some fake plastic thing?"

"Oh, the jade is real. But it's not worth much. It's small and poorly cut, and the rest is silver-plated, not real silver. Start stealing from jewelers instead of from pocketbooks and you might get something valuable."

Emerald can't hold back an annoyed huff. How is she supposed to do _that?_ "Figures that the jade is worthless," she grumbles. It really is just her luck.

Grisa smiles. "You've got that talent of yours, you'll be fine. Sniff out your brethren, why don't you? Emeralds are worth more than jadeites and beryls put together."

Emerald can't resist a small smile. "Y-Yeah, I guess so."

"Your dad's old joke," Sarale snickers. "Repeated it every damn time he came in here, I swear. Laughed every time, too."

Smile gone. That hadn't taken long at all. "Yeah, good for him," she snaps, hoping she doesn't sound too petulant. The next words slip out without her really thinking about it: "You really never heard anything from him?"

"Nope, not a thing. He didn't tell anyone what he was doing or where he was going, except for his friend with the tail. I've got no clue what became of him."

"He never...?" Emerald shakes herself. It doesn't matter, she reminds herself. Dad doesn't care and neither should she. "Never mind. Are...Are you sure that that's all you can give me for the necklace?"

"As it is, yes. Tough break, hon."

Story of her life. "I..." She starts to dig in the pocketbook again. There's nothing else valuable in here, she knows, but still. "Is there...Is the bag itself worth anything?"

"Give it here." Emerald sets the bag on the counter, and Grisa looks it over for several minutes, checking the brand and hardware. "Not the best and not new, but it looks like legitimate designer. Lucky you. Empty it out and throw it in with the necklace and I'll bump you up to a hundred and fifty Lien, let's say."

Emerald nods, knowing it's likely the best deal she's going to get; she really isn't good at negotiating terms for herself. "Great. Thanks, I mean."

"Just business, dearie, don't thank me. Here, I'll throw this in, too, to make this less of a hassle — _Rala,_ go up and get a bag out of the bag bag!"

Sarale holsters her gun and obediently trots up the stairs, where there is a large plastic bag on the landing just inside the apartment. Moments later, Emerald is handed a smaller plastic shopping bag to empty the contents of the pocketbook into, and the promised Lien for both items.

"Out of curiosity," Sarale says as Emerald packs up. "What do you think you'll spend your payday on?"

"Uh...Food, probably?"

"Fair enough." Sarale goes back to polishing the gun, but Emerald suspects it's only for show now; the older girl's tawny eyes are fixed on her and not blinking. "Where have you been roaming around lately? Haven't seen you in a while."

"Oh, uh...Around." Emerald can feel her face getting hot again and curses her quickness to embarrassment. "City's big, lot of...ground to cover..."

"Hm. When are you going to go back to your mother? Do you think you could get me an acquaintance discount? I have some friends coming in from mid-Mistral next weekend, I want to show them a good time."

She barely hears the rest of Sarale's questions; the first one was too strong an electric shock, straight to her gut. "Wh...What?" she hears herself ask, more of a whimper than anything.

" _Ignore_ Rala, dear; if I ever see her strung out on _anything_ your mother sells, she's out of my will." Grisa is looking at her more gravely; Emerald will think of it in those terms because if she sees that roadkill look one more damn time she's going to scream. "That woman doesn't have much to do with us. But I hear that she's been telling everybody who asks that you ran away from her, just like your dad. Has been for a long time now, after being so close-lipped about it."

Emerald can feel herself trembling from head to toe. Mom's been talking about her? Still thinking of her? Mom's been...

"I..."

"So what's up, Em?" Sarale smirks. "You trying to follow your daddy after all? I could _swear_ I heard him say he was going to come back. Ought to be careful, you might just miss each other."

Bile rises in Emerald's throat, and she forces her next words out past it. "My mom's a fucking liar," she snarls, "and she and my shitheel dad deserved each other!"

Sarale blinks, raising her hands up defensively. "Hey, kid, easy now — "

"Shove it, Rala!" she and Grisa shout at the same time.

Her hands shake, and she clenches them hard into fists. She wants to...She just wants to...

Her eyes rove frantically around the wooden shelves of items behind Grisa, all up for sale. Jewelry and tools, of course, but then there's old videos and electronics, a couple beat-up guitars, a dull katana that reaches almost to the top shelf, and...

She narrows her eyes at a pair of twin handguns, brownish, scratched up, and chipped. "Grisa, do those two guns work?"

"I don't stock broken things, dear."

"How much?"

"...Sixty Lien each."

"Don't suppose I could convince you to bump it down?"

"Sixty-five each, ammo and holsters included. Ammo by itself is fifteen per magazine."

She figures that's as good as she'll get. She takes a deep breath, and it still feels like a good idea. She has more than that in cash, after the necklace and the bag and the money in there with it, so she'll still have money left over for food. "I'll take them."

Grisa nods, and the exchange takes less than a minute. Emerald takes longer than that to figure out how to both load and clip the things to her belt, and gets more annoyed every second.

"...See, Gramma, I _told_ you Beryl was bullshitting you." Sarale smirks. "You owe me that katana now."

"I do not and you should have gotten it in writing. Emerald, dear, do you need help with that?"

"I'm _fine."_

Emerald turns on her heel and stalks for the front door. She hears the clatter of Sarale perking up again, and grits her teeth.

"Hey, Em, try not to get beat up too bad next time! _I,_ at least, would miss having you around - _Ow,_ Gramma!"

Emerald allows herself a fleeting smirk of her own at the sound of something being thrown at the older girl as she leaves the shop, trying very hard not to slam the door behind her. She stalks down the cracked and dirty sidewalk, and by the grace of the gods no one spares her an even slightly menacing glance. Well...Not yet, anyways. But she'll take what she can get.

She's in more familiar territory now. Crumbling brownish-red brick buildings, barred and boarded-up windows and doors, the heavy and lingering odor of sewage and unwashed bodies in the air: the closest thing to home she knows. She doesn't know where she's going, but she figures it doesn't matter yet; she has nothing but time on her hands.

The weight of the twin pistols at the small of her back feels strange, but she'll get used to them; they're not wholly unfamiliar to her. She remembers being little, in the sewer-smelling alley next to their building, with empty soda cans and beer bottles set up as targets on the closed end, and her mother standing at the open end, dark green eyes burning into her back, just waiting for her to screw up so she can yell at her for it. She remembers her small soft hands trying to fit properly around Mom's gun, how big and cold and heavy the metal had felt as she clumsily lifted and aimed.

She cannot _believe_ her mother's nerve: lying about her, covering up what she did! She...She has to know what she did was horrible and wrong, but still she won't admit to it or try to fix it. She can't tell what makes her sicker, that or her father waltzing on out of her life like she doesn't even exist. If she ever sees either of them again...

Hesitantly, she reaches back and runs a finger over the butt of one of her new guns. It's longer than a standard handgun, but when she wraps her hand around it...It feels just right in her grip.

The coolness of the metal jars her back out of her own thoughts somewhat. She lifts her head up a little higher to look around at where she finds herself now, and it takes more effort than usual to make her brain do that instead of once again calculating the distance between here and her mother's place (much closer now than it had been this morning). She catches the scent of frying fat and burnt vegetables on the air, not unfamiliar. Ah. She's wound up right by Okela's shop.

Of all the back-alley shops and eateries around her old neighborhood, this is probably the one that's the least transparent about how...untrustworthy the food is. Passing by the alley that their back door leads into, she can see a scruffy young man with a bloodied switchblade in one hand and a dead possum in the other, presenting the animal to the baggy-eyed cook leaning in the doorway. Okela looks it over, deems it fit for consumption, and beckons the man inside. Emerald feels a reflexive churn in her stomach, but doesn't sound so bad, money and a free bowl of her mystery meat soup. She's eaten it before, when she can afford it, but never been able to catch any animals quick enough to earn it.

Rats and mice are too fast and not big enough to be worth the effort. Most of the bigger vermin — skunks, possums, raccoons, the like — only come out at night, but she has distinct broad-daylight memories of starting to dig into a trash can for food and coming face to snout with a large raccoon who had decided that this trash was _his,_ so maybe she'd get...Well, it would be lucky this time around.

And as it happens, after passing by two separate conspiracy theorists screaming on street corners about how the Mistral Council is plotting to kill them all, a minor street brawl between a human gang and a Faunus gang, and one pigeon being hit by a speeding police car, she spies it: a shady side street, a pair of ripped-open garbage bags, and one fat raccoon happily digging into the spoils. Jackpot.

Emerald creeps into the alley and slips one of the guns out of its holster. She'll find a place to practice dual wielding another time; now she just needs to get the hang of firing one gun again. Slowly, she raises the gun, pointing it at the head of the unsuspecting raccoon. It's smaller than a soda can, but the closer distance...probably makes up for it? Much as she tries to forget, she still feels those eyes boring into her back.

 _("This is easy, anyone can do it." Sharp fingers yanking on her hair, nails digging into her arm. "Don't fuck it up, now.")_

Emerald swallows a growl. _Get the fuck out of my head, Mom._

She can do this, now. She's more comfortable with a gun in her hand than a blade. Dad had never bothered to teach her the intimacies of _his_ preferred weapon...small among all the things her father had never bothered to do for her, but it burned just as badly as any of the others. Both of them are nothing more than a raw open wound in her chest, that over the years she's only learned how to patch over, not close up.

But even so, when she clicks the safety off and steadies her hold on the gun, it's that dark, thin blur of a back, with a short green ponytail hanging down onto it, that she sees as her target. That's where all of her problems had really begun, hadn't they? With that retreating back and slam of the door, she had been alone. Alone, for good, even if she hadn't realized it yet.

She can't fix it. She'll never fix it, not with a bullet or anything else. But still, the image doesn't go away.

Emerald pulls the trigger, and blood flies.


	3. Chapter 3

"' _Gimme time to recharge my batteries, I'll see her when she's older_

 _And I'll bounce her on my knee,' well, listen to me, you ungrateful fool_

 _Here comes a dose of reality: you'll go to your grave a sad and lonely man_

 _The door is now closed on your pathetic little plan."_

 _\- Honor Thy Father,_ Dream Theater

~0~

For the first time in eleven years, Jadeite feels like he can exhale.

When he does, he takes in the scents of sawdust, wine, wet grass and mountain air around him. The outposts and lookout towers of the fort are newly completed, and from way up here, he can see that the repairs being carried out on the eastern and southern walls are coming along fantastically.

It had been quite the risk, attacking the Laighin tribe to take their land and base. Akashi had advised him against it. But the other thirty-eight had raised their blades and guns more than enthusiastically to the idea. And one flawless victory later, the Forty Thieves were now the proud owners of a decently sized wooden stronghold, with a mountain on one side of them and dense forest on the others. Bandit tribes were generally a formidable opponent, especially for a comparatively small thieving gang, but most of them are better prepared for an all-out battle than a stealthy invasion and destabilization. And the Laighins had grown sedentary and complacent, only robbing those who ventured through the mountain passes. It had proven fatal, and now Jadeite would be sure to learn from that mistake, in protecting their first permanent home.

A cool northern breeze sweeps through the air, blowing his waist-length ponytail out and teasing at the hems of his new longcoat, and Jadeite smiles to the wide, cloudless blue sky.

They're starting by repairing the heavy log walls, and he trusts his people to get the place finished and safe before he gets back. (The novelty of having that kind of safety net to fall back on still hasn't worn off of him.) And then, they'll start renovating the mountain itself. Some sort of security system will need to be set up, but even on its own, a hideaway set deep within stone will be far safer than hanging out vulnerably in the open air.

It's not yet perfect. Still not one hundred percent secure. But if he waits for every little detail of everything to be perfect, then he'll never get anywhere. And he's waited far too long already.

Jadeite slides down the long ladder to the ground, patting the shoulder of the guard who is supposed to be on top of the lookout tower. "As you were, Zeru."

"Yes, sir!"

He sticks his hands into his coat pockets and strides towards the back of the camp, back straight and head held high. The sounds of chatter in the air and movement around him, all amiable and free of fear, still sends a pleasant tingle washing over his skin. He doesn't have to watch his back, they all watch each other's. He knows every single person he sees by name, can expect friendly greetings and pats on the shoulder instead of curses and shoves. He knows also that considering that, the bar is on the floor as far as his relationship standards go, but it's several steps up from where he - where _all_ of them - had been eleven years ago.

Everywhere he looks now, there is light and warmth. There's towers at all four cardinal directions, where they are watched over by those of them who specialize in arrows and guns, and by the gate behind him, there's Erden with a bazooka almost as big as him. They're protected.

On his left, there's Trigo and Pradera, hard at work over several fires and pans to make breakfast for everybody. They had started out taking the cooking in shifts, but over time, those two had found it their secondary calling and taken over the jobs full-time. They're never hungry.

On his right, there's Taché, soft gray leopard's ears twitching under her hair, demonstrating basic forms with her twin blades to their two teenage recruits, Zhisheng and Hanshui. The siblings had had plenty of choices as to who to learn combat from, but in his humble opinion, Taché is the best; she's the one who had helped him with his new pair of twin scimitars, he thinks, tightening the straps on their sheaths. They're a strong clan, all of them.

As he passes, his people catch his eye, and they smile or wave or say, "Hey, boss, good morning!" He has no damn clue how he managed to get all these people united under his wing, but whatever he did right, he's glad of it. His instincts had been correct, about the kind of connections that first job had managed to open up, which had put the ratio of Akashi being right to him being right at about ninety-nine to one, provided his math was correct too. They had met people, planned new and more sophisticated heists, gathered friends and resources all around the continent as they traveled. An invisible thief flying through job after job like a ghost, quickly mastering his craft, seems to draw similar people in like moths to flame.

And now, after eleven years of sleeping in the brush and on the streets, running from cops and Huntsmen, struggling to prove themselves different from the entire Mistrali underworld trying for the exact same things...Well. To get to the back of the stronghold where the tents are (once they move into the mountain, they'll have proper rooms for everything), one has to pass the most heavily guarded part, right up next to it. Far and away his favorite part...

"A- _kaa-_ shi!"

"Jadeite." His second-in-command idly swishes his tail and whets the thin, curved blades of his hook swords, from where he sits several feet above his leader's head. "I've got an idea of what you want to ask me, and I dearly hope I'm right."

Jadeite grins, taking half a moment before speaking to admire the Faunus' exceptionally glorious perch. Boxes of clothes and food and such, of course, but next to that, piled high enough to be sat upon without fear of collapse, are the sacks and chests stuffed full of Lien, gold, jewelry and just plain jewels...all the things that they've successfully stolen over the past couple weeks. They'll sell some of it, and keep the rest for themselves. Oh, sure, they'll move it to a proper vault as soon as they _have_ one, but he has to admit that the sight of all this, this king's treasure, glittering in the morning sun sets his heart aflutter like nothing he's ever felt before.

A kingly fortune...Jadeite's grin broadens, and he proudly sets a hand on the shining bronze hilt of one of his scimitars.

 _I am the great king of all the thieves of Mistral!_

But a king is nothing, he knows, without his royal family. Without his queen, without his crown princess...His precious child and heir. She'll be almost all grown up now.

"We've kept them waiting long enough, Akashi."

Akashi gives him a hard look, pauses in sharpening his blades. "Yes, I've been telling you that for quite some time."

Jadeite's smile does not falter. "And now I'm listening to you. We're ready now. Let's go home."

~0~

"Mitsubachi!" Jadeite crows as he and Akashi step onto the sidewalk from the train station. He leans over to stage whisper to his partner, "Amazingly enough, it got even shittier since I left."

"Indeed," Akashi murmurs, glancing around with distaste. He surreptitiously rubs his hip, making sure his tail is still safely tucked out of sight. "What are the chances, do you think, that Beryl and Emerald will still be exactly where you left them?"

"Well...Admittedly, not one hundred percent." Jadeite resists the urge to rub the back of his neck, and smiles instead. "But look, the city's still standing, no Grimm around, nothing that would make them _want_ to move, especially when I told them they should stay put. And after everything else we've done, how hard can it be to find two people in one city?"

Akashi sighs, taking another long look around them. "How, indeed...?"

They agree that they will start in the most logical place. It's quite a long walk to the old downtown apartment, but Jadeite remembers every step of the way perfectly. He's hoping that this will be exactly as easy as he had planned out, but when they reach the apartment, there's a different woman, with rabbit ears poorly hidden under frizzy hair, unlocking the door to enter.

"Excuse me?" Jadeite asks brightly. He stops in his tracks when the woman jumps and looks at him with wide eyes. "Do you live here, miss?"

"Y-Yes?"

"I'm looking for a lady named Beryl Sustrai. She's my friend, she used to live here? Does she still?"

The woman looks warily between him and Akashi. "No...Not that I know of. I don't know anything about who lived here before me."

Jadeite raises his eyebrows. "Nothing? If you don't mind telling me, when did you move in here?"

"Um...About three years ago?"

Jadeite nods understandingly. "Are you sure you don't know anything about the previous tenants?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Okay, then. Thank you for your time, miss, sorry for scaring you," Jadeite says, half waving to the woman as he continues on his way down the sidewalk. Akashi gives her a nod that Jadeite guesses is supposed to be reassuring as he follows.

"So, what's your plan now?" he asks as they continue back down the street.

"Well, it wouldn't be very productive to go wandering all around town until we find one of them. So I think we should head to some other landmarks to see if we can find some information there. And if we _do_ run into them on the way, lucky us."

"Indeed." Akashi tugs uncomfortably at the collar of his black duster; Jadeite thinks he looks cooler than ever in it, but he doesn't like feeling restricted. "Lead the way. The sooner we've got them, the sooner we can get the hell out of there."

"My thoughts exactly. First stop, pawn shop."

Grisa still has the same little customer-hailing bell above her door that she had eleven years ago, not a speck of rust on it. Looking around, he can see that the items of the storefront are as varied as always, and that its general layout still looks much the same, if clearly aged. Right down to the handwritten marker note on the empty counter, that instructs him to ring the other bell next to it to receive attention. He dings it, and hears the muffled movement from the back of the store increase in volume.

Instead of Grisa, the woman who comes out from the back is about sixty-five years younger, in a poorly fitted blue suit, white man's shirt, and loose black tie. When she sees him, she freezes in her tracks; her hands stop in the middle of polishing a brass locket and her tawny eyes go wide.

"... _Mr. Sustrai?_ Is that _you?"_

Jadeite blinks. "Do I...know you, miss — Hey, wait a minute! _Sarale?!_ Little Rala?!"

The young woman laughed heartily, and put the locket and cloth down on the counter. "Yep, still hanging around, still trying to inherit, my brothers and sisters can still suck it. Sad thing is, the first one still applies to Gramma, too."

Akashi raises an eyebrow, while Jadeite chuckles in response. "Very funny, young lady. Where's your grandmother?"

"The hell with _her,_ where have _you_ been, you — _Ow!"_

Grisa, in the back doorway, flexed her arm to soothe the slight cramp it had suffered in chucking a full bottle of glass cleaner at her granddaughter's head. "Rala, go clean that shit off the front window. And remember that you're only _marginally_ less useless than your siblings."

"Yes, Gramma..." Sarale grumbles, before shuffling off to set about her task.

To Jadeite's puzzlement, Grisa looks just as irritated at him as she does at the girl. He puts on a more charming smile to counteract it. "Long time no see, ma'am! You haven't aged a day, have you?"

The glare does not falter. "Why are you here, Jadeite? If you keep acting like it's ten years ago I'll come over there and clobber you."

Jadeite blinks. He doesn't think it's quite right to shove a withered old stick even in self-defense, even if in his experience people who lived long enough to become withered old sticks were a tough sort and could stand it, but he isn't quite sure why he would need to defend himself in the first place.

"I'm...I just wanted to ask you whether you've seen my wife and kid. You still know them, don't you?"

"Yes, I know them."

"So can you tell me where Berry's living now? Someone else has her apartment, she must have moved."

Grisa doesn't blink, and the venom in her voice could split stone. "She died, Jadeite."

His smile drops.

Nauseating, freezing cold sets in over him, right down to the marrow of his bones, and his throat closes around the bitter air. But he still manages to choke a word out.

"Wh... _What?!"_

"Your wife is dead. And she's been dead for a few years now."

"What?! H-How did she die?!" It's a pathetic wail, but he doesn't care.

 _Oh, gods, no...Berry, you can't be dead! I...I didn't know, all this time, I..._

Sarale pauses in her task to turn around and shrug. "Drug deal gone wrong? She fucked over her supplier? Some guy on flakka thought she looked like lunch? How should we know?"

 _No, no, no, no...You can't be gone, I trusted you to — !_

"Emerald never wanted to talk about it," Grisa adds, and hearing her name, it's as if he's been tased.

 _I trusted you to take care of her!_

"E-Emerald's still alive, isn't she?!"

"As far as I know, yes." Grisa fixes him with a hard look. "She's been coming in here once in a while since she was nine or ten years old, and her mother hasn't been with her once. They were separated somehow, around then. Your wife claimed she ran away, Emerald gets angry if she's asked what really happened, so don't ask us for any details on _that."_

" _What?!"_ Jadeite moans. "No...No, Berry wouldn't do that, she wouldn't..."

"Wouldn't do what?"

He lets out a strangled noise. _I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, Berry, how could you?! Our baby girl!_

"She's...She's been alone all this time? Beryl never...?"

"No. They wouldn't have anything to do with each other, from what I could tell."

"And she's survived? L-Like that? How?"

Grisa smirks. "She's a thief, just like you. She comes in here to sell the things she steals, but never stays long."

"I think she has a Semblance that helps her out there," Sarale put in. "But she won't tell me whether I'm right no matter how much I tease her. Oh, well. At least it's fun. She's cute when she's embarrassed."

Jadeite barely hears her, in no mood for such amiability. "Where is she?!"

"We don't know, Jadeite," Grisa begins, and the calm tone sends a flare of pure white-hot rage through his chest.

"Don't give me that shit!" he hears himself roar, and both his scimitars flash out, in his shaking hands, to point at Grisa's neck. " _Where is my daughter?!"_

There's a simultaneous two clicks and two _shing_ s behind him, and a split second glance tells him that Sarale has one gun in each hand trained on his head and Akashi's, while Akashi is holding a sword on both her and on him.

"You put those fucking things away, don't touch my Gramma!" Sarale snarls, baring her teeth.

"Fuck off, kid — "

"Fuck _you!_ I'll blow your head off and Emerald will thank me!"

" _Hey!"_ Akashi bellows, left fingers twitching towards the trigger of his sword: if he pulls it, a shuriken will fly from a compartment on the hilt and embed itself in Sarale's throat. " _Everybody_ shut up! Jade, put the swords down, this isn't her fault!"

Jadeite grits his teeth so hard it hurts, but Akashi is right. He steps back, and shoves his blades back into their sheaths. Akashi follows suit, and after another moment, Sarale reluctantly does too.

"I'm sorry," he growls. "I just... _Where is she?"_

Grisa, for her part, looks entirely unfazed, if still annoyed. "I'll excuse it. And if you had bothered to come back _any_ sooner, I'd have pointed you in her direction just as well as I could. But since you've dragged your feet, I have to tell you that she's not in the city anymore."

"What do you _mean,_ she's not in the city?!"

"Jade, what else would she mean by that?" Akashi snaps.

Grisa nods. "Exactly what I said. Just a few days ago, she left the city with some woman. Didn't tell anyone where she was going or why."

"What woman? Where?!"

"You dumbass, what did I just say?!"

"I saw her go!" Sarale pipes up, grinning. "She was following this lady in a red dress. Short black hair, didn't catch her eye color, had a weird weapon on her back. Kind of a bow, kind of swords?"

"Anyone you know?" Akashi asks.

"No, she was _definitely_ not from around here."

"How could you tell?"

Sarale smirks, and then loudly wolf-whistles. "I would have _remembered_ seeing something as sexy as that strutting around this ugly city. No wonder Em was following at her heels like a puppy."

"Where did they go?" Jadeite snarls. "What did she want with my daughter?"

"Not sure. I followed them all the way to the station. I never see Em with anybody, so I was curious. Red Dress bought two tickets, I didn't see to where."

"How did you not see where they were headed?!"

"Well, I was a little _distracted._ Red Dress pulled out her wallet and... _Whew."_ Sarale starts dramatically fanning herself with her hand, looking positively enamored. "I don't know what was hotter, that smirk or _all that Lien._ My guess would be Upper Mistral that they're going, but wherever Em is, she's being _well_ taken care of. Wish Red Dress had snatched _me_ up instead, but oh, well."

"Yes, so do we," Akashi agreed. "That would mean much less of a hassle for us. Jade, how do we move from here?"

"I...I don't _know!"_ Jadeite bursts out, slamming a fist into his thigh in frustration; the counter was his first thought but the girl probably really would shoot him if he did that. Gods, he can't stop this _shaking!_ "This...This isn't what I..."

Beryl dead. Murdered, after abandoning their baby. Emerald — his sweet, kind, trusting daughter — all alone and fending for herself for years. Gods, oh, gods, she must have been so _terrified,_ _anything_ could have happened to her, and he wasn't there to protect her — !

He's cold. Shaking. He's looking down at the floor with hazing vision, eyes twitching...gods, he's going to throw up. Shit. Shit, he can't do that, he can't, he's got to...got to...

Gods have mercy, he can still hear her crying. Starving, sick, scared to death, in every dream he's had for eleven years.

"I-I've got to find her," he chokes out. "I...I'm her _father,_ I have to...I should be taking care of her..."

"Well, you've certainly been taking good care of yourself," Grisa says, looking him and his new clothes and swords up and down with a critical eye.

"That's — This isn't about me! This was never about me!" Jadeite shouts. "If it was just me I'd be long dead by now, and who would give a fuck?! All I wanted to do was find a way to give my wife and kid a good home! A safe home! And it took me longer than I thought it would but I finally did that! I promised them I would do it, I told them to _wait_ for me! All Emerald had to do was stay here, and — "

"Oh, good gods, what did you _expect,_ you daft bastard?!" Grisa snaps, lunging up over the counter to slap Jadeite upside the head for emphasis.

" _Ow!"_ Jadeite protests; it hadn't been hard but those knobby knuckles _stung_. "W-Well, I _expected_ my family to remember what I said and _listen!"_

"Why? Everyone down here wants a way out of this shithole city, and they'll jump at the first chance they get at one! You know that! You _did_ that! You think your daughter would pass her chance up to listen to some deadbeat she's seen neither hide nor hair of in ten years?!"

"Eleven," Sarale chimes in helpfully.

" _Eleven_ years?!"

"I...I thought they'd remember. Her and Beryl both."

"Well, either they didn't at all, or they did and just didn't care. Why would they?"

"I-I...I know I never did enough before. That's why I had to leave and finally do something more! I understand why Beryl was so disappointed in me, I was more ashamed of myself than I can say. But...did I ever give them a reason not to _trust_ me? To think I didn't love them?!"

Grisa's face softens slightly. "I don't doubt that you had good intentions, Jadeite. I don't think you have the capacity for legitimate cruelty in you. But you _screwed up,_ you idiot. Did you really think everything would be okay, if you just skipped town for years on end, and never contacted anybody? Even if you _did_ try to explain yourself."

"I...I thought..."

"I'm sure you thought lots of things, all of them wrong."

Jadeite swallows down a whimper. His racing heart beats a near bruise on his chest. "I...I'm sorry. That I...pulled my swords on you. And yelled at you. Ma'am."

"Apology accepted. Rala is not sorry for holding her gun on you."

Sarale shakes her head in agreement.

"You...You really don't know where she might be? A hint, a mention of someplace Em might have wanted to go, something on this woman, anything? Please..."

Grisa sighs. "I would if I could, Jadeite. I truly would, if only to see you get sucker punched trying to go in for a hug. But I really do have no idea. You've got a Scroll now, I bet? Unlock it."

"Y-Yes, ma'am," he says, numbly holding it out to her. She takes it, puts in a number, and returns it.

"If we see her around here again, I'll call you. But I wouldn't count on it."

"Oh! If you're willing to shell out some Lien, we could hold her here for you!" Sarale offers, brightening up. "I've got handcuffs in my dresser drawer upstairs and — "

" _Enough,_ Rala!"

"Thank you, both of you, I..." Jadeite stumbles back, then manages to turn around. "Thank you..."

The jingle of the bell sounds somehow depressing as he trudges out of the shop. He feels like he's been sledgehammered up both sides of his head. All this way here, it had seemed like his wife and daughter were finally so close, right at his fingertips and all he had to do was reach out for them. But now...Now they were further away from him than ever.

 _This is all my fault...This is all my fault! Good fucking gods, how am I supposed to fix this?!_

Akashi starts to lay light, hesitant fingers on his shoulder, and he impulsively bats them away. "Don't, Akashi. Don't, if you're going to say what I think you want to say, just... _don't."_

Akashi nods, finding this fair enough. "I suppose you're thinking it all for yourself anyway."

Jadeite grinds his teeth so he won't spit out anything else he'll regret, and jams his fists in his pockets and holds them there so tightly they hurt, so they might stop shaking. Or maybe so he doesn't move to the urge to beat himself to death. Beryl's voice is in his head anyway: _Why are you so_ stupid, _Jade?!_

He doesn't know. He doesn't know. If he did he wouldn't be in this fucking mess, now, would he?! None of them would!

"Jade. Take a deep breath."

Right, right...He's the leader, he's in charge, and to lose his cool now would be unbecoming of the position he holds. His people will be worried if they see him come back with anything but a game face on, especially since they're expecting him to return with his wife and daughter in tow. He'd been so excited to surround Beryl with friends, to take the burdens off her shoulders, and to give Emerald thirty-nine adoptive aunts, uncles, and cousins that would dote on her.

Emerald...His poor daughter thinks herself abandoned, loved by no one. He's done some truly shitty things to other people in his life, but he's certain that forcing that on her has got to be the worst.

 _But it's okay. I can fix it. I'm going to fix it. Dad's coming to find you, princess._ _Even if you don't want to stay with me, if only to make sure that you're okay..._

"Akashi," he says, jerking his head up. Chin up, back straight, eyes forward, he's not going to wallow in misery when the only thing he should be doing is fixing his mistakes. If it takes him the rest of his worthless life, he'll fix this.

Akashi's eyebrows raise at his sudden intensity. "What's our next move, then?"

"Call Taché," he orders. His third-in-command will be ready and waiting to answer. "Tell her we'll be back by dark, mission unsuccessful, and to have the clan ready for a meeting by then."

"Will do."

"Good." Jadeite's eyes narrow in determination. "We've got a job to do."

~0~

They walk back through the camp gates just after sundown. Everyone murmurs and jostles at the sight of them, like a pile of dry autumn leaves in the wind. The light of the bonfire they've lit in the center of damp dyes them all in the same golden-orange color, and illuminates the concern lining all of their faces.

Taché is the only one he can see with an entirely stoic expression, standing with a straight back and crossed arms on the pile of supply crates set up on the other side of the fire for his use. The only betrayal of any discomfort he can see in her posture, as he steps up to the pile, is the downward twitch of the leopard ears under her thick mane of white-gold hair.

"All right there, boss?" she asks in a low voice as he gets within earshot. "I must say, I was looking forward to meeting the little lady. Giving her proper blade training."

"As we're informed, the girl prefers guns," Akashi mutters.

"Thank you, Taché," Jadeite says tightly.

She steps down onto a lower box, and he takes the place she had saved on the highest one. He stands to face his people, as their eyes glinting with firelight all look up to him, with Akashi at his right hand and Taché at his left. He clears his throat, and raises his voice; thirty-seven people were not a great crowd but he wanted his voice to carry anyway.

"Listen up! As Taché has told you, my mission to Mitsubachi City has failed. Since I first left it, my wife has died."

He still feels a nauseating swoop in his stomach as he says it out loud, and the rising startled chatter the words elicit from his people certainly doesn't help. He prefers their sympathy over the cold callousness of the city, but still...He bites his lip and raises his voice louder. Stronger.

"Even so! Not all is lost to us. My daughter Emerald is still alive. She's disappeared from Mitsubachi, but she is still out there somewhere. And we are going to find her!"

There were still traces of confusion on some faces, but now there was a glint of light in the eyes of his people that had nothing to do with the fire. Smiles. Determination. Gods, it's why he loves them all so.

"I won't endanger the home we're building here, so I won't ask you to set aside our line of work. But until my daughter is located, consider it an overarching mission to keep at the back of your mind at all times. Use any connection we have, keep your eyes open at all times, and inform me _immediately_ if you think you've found her."

Zhisheng and Hanshui turn to each other, smirking and bumping fists: an exciting new game. Their bookkeeper, Silvano, holds his own little girl on his hip — he had hired the clan to steal the child back from bandits that specialized in human trafficking, when the cops had proven useless, and paid them half in cash and half in his services afterward — and gives him an encouraging smile. Erden's booming voice sounds from the back: "Boss! How will we know it's her?"

Jadeite grins, and gestures with a flourish to himself. "You ever picture me as a teenage girl? Do that. Sixteen-year-old, with my hair, eyes, skin, and last name, last seen traveling with a black-haired woman in red. Should be pretty easy to recognize once you've found her. If you're not sure you've got the right girl, send me a picture on your Scroll so I can confirm, I'm sure I'll be able to recognize my own daughter. Though _try_ not to be too creepy about that if you do?"

He ignores the all too familiar look that Akashi and Taché subtly shoot each other over his shoulders. They can doubt him all they like; he knows what he's doing.

"I want all of you on high alert at all times until she's found. Don't approach her, I don't want her to be scared, but _do not_ lose her trail until I get there. Is that understood?"

The clan shouts back up to him one united sound of assent, and his grin broadens.

"Boss, any idea where we should start looking?" Taché asks, shimmering aqua eyes sliding over to him. "Since Mitsubachi is almost definitely out."

He turns to her, but keeps his voice loud enough to carry to the rest of them. "Don't rule anything out. I'm pretty sure she's still in Mistral, considering where the trains go from Mitsubachi. But anywhere on Anima could be fair game."

She raises her eyebrows. "Much as I'm going to love adopting another niece, this sounds like quite the impossible hunt. Are you sure we can handle it on our own?"

Jadeite nods emphatically. Unless he has absolutely no other choice, he isn't going to involve any outside parties in this; he won't trust any other criminal outfits with his child's life, and he'll trust cops and Huntsmen even less. This is purely a family matter.

"Hey, boss!" Zeru calls from the side of the group, brandishing his bow. "No disrespect, but what about your wife? How did she die? Do we need to go out and get some payback? I'll - "

The young man is cut off by an empty beer stein flung from the other side of the group to knock him in the head. "Zeru! Have some fucking tact!"

"I am!" Zeru shouts back, voice almost cracking with indignance.

"Enough." The uncharacteristic coldness in Jadeite's command silences them both at once. His mouth is set into a thin line, and his eyes are narrowed. He waits a moment to collect himself before he speaks again: "I will grieve for my wife when I have the luxury to. For now, it's my living child I'm concerned with. I will not rest until I know that she's safe."

He doesn't quite know how to feel about Beryl now, after what he's heard. He isn't sure if she even deserves their grief, much less revenge in her name. Emerald knows what happened between them, she's the only one left who does, and he will make his final judgments after hearing the truth from her mouth.

But his clan starting to look despondent and concerned at his brief slip of anger. That's not what Jadeite wants; he needs his people fired up. And that's a part he's good at playing, even on the rare points in his life that he can't feel it genuinely. So to that end, he pulls his scimitars out with a flourish and a spin, like a general with his saber giving the order to charge, and yanks a sunny and encouraging grin onto his face. It's the way they're used to seeing him.

"I'll do anything I have to, to make sure that my family is safe! That's what a leader does, and what a father does! Can I trust my clan to back us up?!"

The roar of assent that meets that question, far stronger and prouder than the last one, is more than enough to genuinely lift his spirits a bit. His smile broadens, and in the light of the fire and love of his clan he is warmed. He looks out over their heads, past the fire and their land and the tops of the trees. His daughter is out there, somewhere.

 _One day we'll see each other again, Emerald,_ Jadeite promises her. _If it takes me the rest of my life, if I have to search all of Remnant, your father will find you._

~0~

The rain clatters on the roof of the tent, but the material is thick enough that Emerald has no fear of it collapsing in on her, like so many sheets of cardboard.

She snuggles deeper into her soft blanket tucked around her, her fluffy pillow, her heavy bedroll that still smells new. It's the middle of the night, pitch black and wet outside, and for the first time in years, she doesn't care. The tent and everything in it are nicer than anything she's ever slept in before, but she knows that that isn't the reason she's so warm and safe in here.

Quietly as she can, she turns over to sneak another glance, as best she can in the dark. Barely two feet away, Cinder is sound asleep on her own bedroll, lying on her side, her breathing and expression both soft in slumber.

Looking at her, Emerald couldn't have resisted the smile that pulls at her mouth even if she'd wanted to. It seems downright unbelievable that just days ago, she had been _afraid_ of this woman. That she had begun the week sleeping on concrete, holding her guns tight and trying in vain to ignore the hard knot of fear in her empty stomach, with dirty clothes, greasy hair, and shoes that left her with blisters.

Then, all of a sudden, Cinder had appeared in front of her, and swept her off her feet.

It was like the woman sleeping next to her had waved a magic wand and fixed _everything._ Suddenly she was living the life of the heroine in the stories she'd read as a kid, whisked away from despair by a beautiful hero, and on her way to adventure.

Cinder had eased her into a proper diet slowly, so she wouldn't make herself sick, and now she knows what it's like to have a comfortably full stomach and a mouth not constantly dry with thirst, all the time. It'll be a tough habit to actually break, but she no longer has to look over her shoulder to check whether some creep was following behind her; if someone dares try to touch her, Cinder will cut their throat. And never again will she fall asleep and wake up lonely and in pain: Cinder is never too far away from her, now.

Gods, Emerald could lie here and look at her forever. Not in a _weird_ way, of course, she just...It's still a little bit hard for her to believe that Cinder is really _here,_ that a person who cares for her truly exists, and won't disappear with the morning light like a beautiful dream. And she _is_ so beautiful, too...

As if sensing the gaze fixed on her face, Cinder twitches and murmurs in her sleep, before her eyes half-open. They're still cloudy with sleep, but there's a small spark of recognition in them when they fall on Emerald, who reflexively freezes at being caught. But Cinder doesn't seem to mind being stared at; a slow, drowsy smile tugs at her lips.

"Hm? Something wrong, Emerald?"

"No, I'm just..."

"Are you too cold?"

The softness of her voice, the reminder of the tent's perfect warmth, relaxes Emerald somewhat. She smiles: what a question. "I'm not cold at all. Not with you here."

Cinder gives a light laugh, and unzips her bedroll, lifting her arms to beckon Emerald into them. "Come here."

Emerald's heart jumps up into her throat. There's only a split second of hesitation, while her brain races to confirm that she just heard that right, before she darts out of her own bedroll and slips herself into Cinder's. It's just as thick as hers, and Cinder zips it back up and wraps her arms around her so fast that they don't lose any warmth. A small, instinctive noise of relief escapes Emerald, feeling her head being tucked under Cinder's chin, her body held close and safe. She hasn't slept up against another person like this since...since the last night she had slept in her mother's arms.

She shivers, and presses her head into the crook of Cinder's neck. No, she doesn't have to think about Mom anymore. She doesn't _want_ to think about Mom anymore. But she can still feel her heart dropping into her stomach as she recognizes the woman doubled over in the gutter across the street, hear her trying to bite back moans of pain. She hadn't even tried to hold back her own tears, pathetic as they were.

 _("...Emerald?" Her eyes are half-shut in pain, but they're not cloudy yet. "Oh, gods, you've grown up..."_

" _I-It's okay, Mom...Who did this?! C-Come here, I...I'll help you!"_

 _A thin smile. Bloody fingers leave the hole that once was a stomach, to trace thick, wet trails down her cheek. "Emerald..."_

 _She's trying to reach under her shoulders and pick her up, but she can't, she's too weak and her mother is already deadweight. "D-Don't try to talk! Let...Let me carry you, c-come on..."_

 _Beryl is smiling: thin and mirthless as always, but there's a spark in her eyes. "B-Baby doll...Show me something. Before I go...M-Make me see something...")_

Her blood had run cold then. And now...Half of her knows that in the end, the bullet that gutted Beryl Sustrai hadn't been hers. The other half, through the white blankness that the memory soon rushes into, tells her that maybe it hadn't been the _bullet_ that killed her, that she had been right about her daughter all along...

A trace of that same ice is starting to creep through her veins now, and a whimper escapes her as she grips Cinder tighter. No, _no,_ she is _never_ going to think about what happened after that, not _ever_ again. It was three whole years ago, she should be over it by now. It doesn't matter anymore.

Gentle fingers are running through her hair and down her neck; Cinder senses her discomfort. "What's wrong?"

Emerald half-heartedly shakes her head. "I'm fine, don't worry. I'm just..."

It's hard to find the words. She's had so little use for them. They come so easily when she's trying to deceive marks, but when it comes to speaking the plain truth of her heart, nothing comes out. Nothing that feels like it's enough, anyway. (She's not as smart as Cinder, who weaves words together more beautifully than anything Emerald has ever heard before.)

She wishes the wrenching feeling in her gut would just go away, but thankfully there's plenty here to soothe it. She takes a deep breath, inhaling the faint scent of wood smoke still lingering on Cinder's skin. It doesn't matter how awful it is, or was, outside. The tent - the bedroll itself, even - was their own little world, warm and dry and clean. And Cinder's arms around her are so strong and safe...Cinder will never let her go, of that she is one hundred percent sure. When Emerald hugs her, she hugs back instead of pulling away, she strokes her hair instead of yanking it, and she handles her so gently, every little touch makes Emerald's skin tingle and her heart race, yearning for more.

Cinder doesn't hate her Semblance; in fact she loves it, tells Emerald it makes her _wonderful_ and _special_ and _worthy_ and all the things that no one has ever thought of her before. She would never call her a freak and then throw her away, out of nowhere. Emerald will never have to watch her retreating back, disappearing into the light and leaving her behind. Cinder is like no one else in this world. She would never let her down, leave her all alone. Never.

"I'm just...I'm so glad you're here."

Cinder makes that soft half-laugh sound again, and keeps petting her hair. Gods, it feels so _nice,_ Emerald has to fight the reflexive urge to squirm with delight under her hands. "I could say the same of you."

Emerald snuggles closer to an unresisting Cinder, smiling against her collarbone. Just being able to fall asleep in an embrace like this, with the promise of waking up in it too, is more beautiful than even her wildest dreams.

She doesn't need anyone else. She only needs Cinder.


End file.
